Month: August 2018

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company with no public scrutiny.

“I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the source said, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.”

From The Intercept article: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

Today’s post will explain why I think the U.S. tech giants are in the early stages of destroying themselves. It will focus on two of the biggest names in the space, Facebook and Google. Both face serious issues that are only now truly coming to a head and rooted in two primary factors, size and politics.

Facebook is further along in the process of being in serious trouble, so let’s start there. The social media company currently has 2.2 billion active users worldwide, which amounts to well over half of all human beings online at the moment (estimated at 3-4 billion). In other words, the company already has a tremendous share of global potential users. Since everybody already knows what Facebook is, you have to assume those who aren’t using it (like me), aren’t using it for a reason. Thus, you have to ask whether or not meaningful growth in active users is remotely realistic for Facebook. I would argue not.

There are many reasons to bet against Facebook significantly growing active users in the years ahead, but the main hurdle seems to be keeping the users it already has actively engaged. Specifically, I think there are two types of users Facebook risks losing going forward. These people might not “delete Facebook” per se, but their engagement with the platform may drop meaningfully.

The first consists of the not insignificant number of Americans who in part blame Facebook and “fake news” for the election of Donald Trump. These types are placing enormous amounts of pressure on politicians to “do something” and you can see Facebook executives starting to squirm. Facebook doesn’t know what to do and risks responding to this political outrage in a manner that could irreparably harm the platform’s appeal.

For example, Facebook executives have recently shown signs of an increased eagerness to grovel to politicians still cranky about Hillary’s loss. Here’s an example from yesterday’s New York Timesarticle, Facebook Has Identified Ongoing Political Influence Campaign:

WASHINGTON — Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity around divisive social issues ahead of November’s midterm elections.

In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week and a public post on Tuesday, the company told lawmakers that it had detected and removed 32 pages and accounts connected to the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference. It publicly said it had been unable to tie the accounts to Russia, whose Internet Research Agency was at the center of an indictment earlier this year for interfering in the 2016 election, but company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was possibly involved, according to two officials briefed on the matter.

Facebook has been under intense pressure to validate the theory that Russia and fake news led to Hillary’s loss, especially from Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. Executives feel a need to comply, so they rolled out the ridiculousness above. Facebook has 2.2 billion active users and the company is making a big deal about 32 pages and accounts, which it admittedly can’t even tie to Russia (believe me they’re trying). Naturally, this didn’t stop Warner from explicitly linking them to Russia:

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has exerted intense pressure on the social media companies, praised Facebook on Tuesday for bringing the activity into the public but asked for its cooperation in updating laws to prevent influence campaigns.

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation,” he said. “And I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity.”

See how this game works? This is pure political theater and Facebook is now an eager participant.

The moment a social media platform takes sides it’s no longer a platform and quickly loses its raison d’être. Facebook is making this mistake and Twitter seems to be moving the same way. This particular era of social media is ending, new platforms are needed.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) July 31, 2018

This is what happens when you become too big, too powerful and then politicians take notice. Facebook’s best days are behind it.

Let’s now turn to Google. If what The Intercept is reporting today is true, Google’s become so desperate for growth and new revenue streams, it’s decided to become an active and willing participant in keeping over 1 billion Chinese ignorant and oppressed in the pursuit of some extra cash.

From the article, Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal:

Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.

The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans…

Google’s search service cannot currently be accessed by most internet users in China because it is blocked by the country’s so-called Great Firewall. The app Google is building for China will comply with the country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable…

Examples cited in the documents of websites that will be subject to the censorship include those of British news broadcaster BBC and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The search app will also “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, the documents state. The censorship will apply across the platform: Google’s image search, automatic spell check and suggested search features will incorporate the blacklists, meaning that they will not recommend people information or photographs the government has banned.

Google executives realize how completely and utterly evil this is, which is why they’re apparently actively hiding the initative from their own employees. Not a good look.

Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company with no public scrutiny

There’s a reason Google executives want to keep this on the down low. Recall the company experienced widespread internal protest and even some resignations related to its drone partnership with the U.S. military, Project Maven (see: Preach Less, Live Your Values More).

The China initiative seems even more problematic from a political perspective. It’s one thing to help the U.S. government, it’s another to actively help the primary strategic rival of U.S. imperial dominance maintain its authoritarian government in the name of profit, which is exactly what Google would be doing. This brings me to my next point.

While it’s currently all the rage to yell Russia, Russia, Russia because Hillary lost, the actual geopolitical rival to U.S. imperial dominance on the world stage is unquestionably China. In other words, if Google’s own employees don’t come after it for this despicable move, U.S. politicians will.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you get too big, too powerful and too desperate for growth at all costs.

Google in 3 acts:

Don’t be evil.
Evil is a subjective term.
Evil is profitable. https://t.co/i7Tw4Un8Cq

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 1, 2018

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For years, some more skeptical analysts had been stumped by the relentless US consumer demand US for new cars, despite rising household debt levels, stagnant real wages, and concerns about record subprime exposure. Today, we may have found the dynamo that drove purchases to a plateau of between 17 and 18 million units over the past three years: pervasive dealer discounts and incentives.

Almost all major manufacturers reported a sharp drop in U.S. deliveries for July, led by a 15% plunge at Nissan Motor. The reason: for the first time in 55 months, the auto industry – perhaps due to concerns about the impact of auto tariffs – cut back spending on incentives, snapping a streak of monthly consecutive increases that began 4 1/2 years ago, according to J.D. Power.

While General Motors stopped reporting its monthly numbers earlier this year, Bloomberg reports that its sales fell 3.3% last month, the same drop as Ford.

Fiat Chrysler, which recently lost its CEO Sergio Marchionne, was the rare bright spot in July, driven largely by a surge in Jeep SUV sales fueling the Italian-American company’s 5.9% jump.

However, as we reported previously, both automakers could have used some positive headlines. GM lowered its profit expectations last week largely because of rising commodity prices, which have jumped since President Donald Trump put tariffs on steel and aluminum; meanwhile Jeep’s surprisingly weak performance in China – where subsidies for new auto purchases recently ended – was a major reason Fiat Chrysler dropped its forecasts for the year.

As a result of underwhelming numbers from Nissan, Ford and Honda (and GM), the annualized industry sales rate slowed to just 16.8 million, from 17.2 million in June, and just barely above last year’s selling rate.

Fiat shares declined 2.2%, while GM fell 2% and Ford dropped 1.4% in New York trading.

* * *

While generally expected, the drop in sales caps a rough month for the auto industry during which Detroit’s carmakers all revised their earnings guidance lower and Ford embarked on a five-year restructuring plan.

Additionally, as Bloomberg adds, the sales month “will underscore investor fears that auto sales have peaked and that, without ever-higher sales incentives to keep consumers interested, demand will continue to soften.”

“The incentives we’re seeing are more targeted,” in part because inventories are lean, said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst for Autotrader. “They’re not just slathered on.”

The auto industry’s reliance on incentives is troubling for several reasons: not only are they a profit “race to the bottom” as OEMs scramble to preserve and gain market share, but they may also indicate that without at least the impression that they are getting a good deal, many cash-strapped US consumers will be reluctant to purchase autos. Meanwhile, as the tariff picture remains murky at best, changing one day to the next depending on what Trump tweets at any given moment, auto makers will be reluctant to offer the same generous discount that drove sales for the past 5 years.

One possible explanation is that carmakers may have done their discounting early this summer and decided that enough was enough, even as July’s results show some payback for promotions that fueled a better-than-expected close to the first half, according to Bloomberg.

Not everyone agrees: “an incentive pullback is rare for this time of year”, said Mark LaNeve, head of U.S. sales for Ford, which was hurt by steep drops for the Escape crossover and Fusion sedan.

“I don’t ever remember a de-escalation from June to July, as you go into the traditional summer sell-down season,” LaNeve said on a call with analysts. “June received much more benefit than July in terms of the Fourth of July business.”

However, one clear reason for the pullback is that as a result of rising rates, it’s getting prohibitively expensive to offer incentives that are tied to loans. A series of rate hikes have pushed interest rates to levels not seen in a decade, which makes subsidized interest rates more expensive to offer.

“The summer is usually a time for manufacturers to roll out the deals and clear out the inventory,” said Edmunds analyst Jeremy Acevedo. “But interest rates are peaking right now. It’s getting more expensive to offer these deals.”

Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist for Cox Automotive, pointed out another possible issue: that while automakers are pulling back on new-vehicle incentives, there are great deals on used-car lots. Returns of vehicles that have been leased are on the rise, and that added supply gives consumers more choice of lower-priced alternatives to new models.

“There is such tremendous competition from the used-car market,” Chesbrough told Bloomberg. “We have so many off-lease vehicles coming back to market and they are cheaper than new cars.”

Finally, there is the most likely reason: US consumers, dramatic upward revisions to the personal savings rate if only on paper notwithstanding, simply can not afford the extra dollars at a time when the prices of staples and other discretionary purchases are rising sharply. This, of course, is the worst case scenario because it means that even with record auto loans outstanding, many of which have crossed into subprime territory, Americans no longer feel confident enough in their financial future to make a long-term commitment.

Which incidentally is precisely what the latest UMichigan consumer sentiment survey revealed last week, when it showed that vehicle buying conditions have collapsed to the lowest level in five years. WARD’s Automotive reported a 16.68mm US auto sales SAAR for July – the weakest July sales since 2014 and set to go notably lower based on car-buying-sentiment.

While bad news for automaker sales and profits, this is even worse news for the economy, as it confirms that the latest 4.1% GDP print is merely product of some overzealous excel jockey at the BLS who was told to goalseek a 4%+ number at any cost.

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Authored by Jonathan Newman via The Mises Institute,

According to the Global Footprint Network, humans have already used a year’s worth of Earth’s resources in 2018. “Earth Overshoot Day” has crept up the calendar from December 29th in 1970 to August 1st in 2018.

Source: https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/

The more we consume beyond their estimate of Earth’s ability to regenerate resources, the earlier the date: “The date of Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by comparing humanity’s total yearly consumption (Ecological Footprint) with Earth’s capacity to regenerate renewable natural resources in that year (biocapacity).”

By my calculations, their dates mean that we have consumed about 60% of Earth’s annual resource capacity in 48 years since 1970. The difference is 12 Earth-years of resources, which sounds like a gigantic debt, payable by riding a bike to work, going vegan, enforcing strict population limits, and returning to pre-industrial living conditions wherever possible. Yuck!

Commenters at various sites where the Earth Overshoot Day was published overwhelmingly blame capitalism and overpopulation as root causes of our resource overconsumption. Private businesses have no incentive to maintain resources — greed leads them to exploit the earth for profits today with no regard for tomorrow. The lack of government-provided birth control and sex education because of misogynistic politicians has allowed birth rates in some parts of the world to remain high, putting undue strain on our scarce resources.

The problem with this is that neither economic theory nor global indicators of human well-being bear this out.

What economic theory says about resource use

Economic theory does not say that entrepreneurs disregard the future availability of some productive resource. Entrepreneurs are not in the business of making money today — they are interested in earning profits across time and they will use their resources accordingly.

Even if some resource is exhausted, all it means is that entrepreneurs satisfied consumer demands when consumers wanted them satisfied. It is wrong to blame the producers for resource exhaustion because they are subject to the consumers.

Consumers are also interested in the maintenance of resources, too, though. The way we balance the use of resources today and tomorrow depends on everybody’s rate of time preference, the premium we place on present consumption over future consumption.

We are more likely to save and maintain resources when we expect the future consumption to be greater or better. This is why we don’t eat all of the grapes today, but use some to make wine for future consumption. It’s also why farmers are careful to rotate crops and not overfarm their land so that it will be as productive as possible for as long as possible.

Therefore, the best policies for the maintenance of resources are private property and allowing entrepreneurs to utilize and experiment with new technologies that might decrease costs (using less resources) and increase production (making the future payoff greater). Productivity is not a drain on the Earth’s resources, but a great incentive to entrepreneurs and consumers to save and invest for the future.

Of course, one kind of policy that encourages profligacy is expansionary monetary policy. Inflationary environments lead everyone to consume more than they would have, because holding on to cash while prices are rising is a losing position. Credit expansion also causes entrepreneurs to waste productive resources by pursuing the wrong lines of production — consider the empty mansions in the wake of the Fed-fueled housing bubble that popped in 2007–2008.

Economic theory is clear, then, on what actually leads to overconsumption and malinvestment of present resources. But what about the data? Should we be afraid of overpopulation or dwindling natural resources?

Every indicator of human well-being looks great

In short, no. Every conceivable indicator of human well-being shows that the world is much better off with 7.6 billion people in 2018 than we were with half that in the early 1970s. Earth’s population has doubled, but the share of the population in extreme poverty has been slashed from about 60% in 1970 to less than 10% today.

The illiteracy rate has shrunk from 44% to 14% since 1970. The number of people without access to improved water sources has halved just since 1990. The global average life expectancy has increased by over 12 years since 1973. If you are doubtful that humans are broadly and significantly better off compared to 1970, then browse ourworldindata.org, where I found all of this data, and see for yourself.

So, humans are better off, but what about the Earth? Have we prospered at the expense of our planet?

Is the Earth turning into a desert planet?

Well, the Earth got 14% greener from 1986 to 2016. Aquaculture fish production is significantly outpacing wild-caught fishing, which has flatlined since the 1980s (PDF here, graph below). Cereal production has more than tripled since the 1960s, far outpacing population increases, even though land used for cereal production has stayed about the same (graph below).

Source: FAO, “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” 2016

In 2017, BP estimated that we had 1696.6 billion barrels of proved oil reserves. They project that it is enough for 50 years, but this estimate is based on maintaining 2017 production levels, when it is more than reasonable to expect demand to fall and production to become more efficient. Also, we can expect new technologies to make previously unproved, inaccessible oil reserves accessible. Speaking of energy, net electricity production from nuclear sources has increased 3473% from 1970 to 2013, based on data from the Earth Policy Institute.

Conclusion

We are wealthier and more productive than ever and we seem to be maintaining and even expanding Earth’s capacity to meet our needs. I’m optimistic on this front.

Perhaps the only cause for alarm is that so many people are pessimistic about the world population and our natural resources despite the astounding progress we’ve made just in the last 50 years. Pessimists ask for governments to intervene, but the interventions are either unnecessary or harmful to the progress made possible by the market economy.

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With Apple reporting solid Q3 earnings and its stock surging by 5% today, bucking the overall market, the only question investors were left with was at what price with Apple become the world’s first $1 trillion company. The reason why this is a moving target is because starting in 2013, the company has been repurchasing millions of shares, shrinking the total number of shares outstanding with every quarter.

Moments ago, in its third quarter 10-Q filing, Apple provided the answer when it revealed an adjusted outstanding share count of 4,829,926,000, or converted into market cap, it means that AAPL will cross the $1,000,000,000,000 mark when its stock price rises above $207.05, or just under $6 dollars, from its Thursday closing price of $201.50. This also means that AAPL is virtually assured to cross the psychological level well ahead of runner up Amazon which also is rapidly closing in on the historic benchmark.

The chart below shows the amazing shrinkage of AAPL’s shares outstanding, which after peaking at 6.58 billion near the end of 2012, have since dropped 26% thanks to buybacks, and are now at a number last seen in January 2001.

Incidentally, Apple’s unprecedented slow-motion MBO has another key function: as Bloomberg’s David Wilson writes, the decline in share count is responsible for 42% of the stock’s gain from the end of 2013 through Tuesday, as shown in the chart. And, Wilson notes, “as Apple nears $1 trillion in value, a threshold no U.S. company has ever crossed, the gap may only get wider.”

To be sure, Apple is not alone: a study published by the National Employment Law Project and the Roosevelt Institute found that U.S. companies spent 60% of net income on repurchases, money that could have been used for pay increases, reinvesting in company growth or general R&D spending – between 2015 and 2017.

Then again, Apple shareholders – whose investment is about to cross the $1 trillion market cap line for the first time ever – are certainly delighted that instead of doing any of those things, AAPL focused on what it does best, at least in recent years: rest on its laurels, borrow the best technology created by its competitors, and use the billions in cash this generates every quarter to buy back its own stock.

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Authored by Ted Dabrowski via WirePoints.com,

If there was one guy you’d think wouldn’t succumb to the pressures of living in Illinois, it’s Lakewood Mayor Paul Serwatka.

He’s a reformer and a fighter. In the past year he’s succeeded where most politicians refuse to go. He lowered the Village of Lakewood’s property taxes by 10 percent and eliminated a TIF district, going against the trend of higher spending and bigger tax bills in communities across the state. And he did all that without cutting services. He was showing Illinoisans what reform-oriented leadership could look like.

But every family that’s chosen to flee Illinois in recent years hit a breaking point and Serwatka finally hit his. For him, it was the risk he wouldn’t be able to care financially for his growing family.

You can’t blame him and those families that have already left. For many, it’s become too expensive to live in Illinois. For others, good-paying working class and manufacturing jobs have disappeared. And for yet others, they’re tired of being taken for granted and mistreated by their politicians.

At the core of the decision for many families to leave is the burden of higher property taxes. They’ve become punitive in too many parts of the state, as Wirepoints has covered in detail.

That’s true even in Lakewood, a city of nearly 5,000 people located in McHenry County. Residents in that county pay some of the state’s – and the nation’s – highest effective tax rates, measured as a percentage of household incomes.

Serwatka has four young children to think about – ages 3 to 8 – and he did the basic math that many Illinois families are doing in their kitchens or family rooms. They’re comparing what their property taxes are in Illinois to what they could be in other states – and what they could do with all the money they save.

For Serwatka, his comparison city was Decatur, Alabama.

There his family found 10 acres and a house that’s 25 percent bigger than their current Illinois home, all at roughly the same cost. The Alabama house also has access to a private lake shared by some 60 homeowners. And his home in Decatur is only 20 miles from Huntsville, which is booming in all kinds of ways.

What are his Alabama property taxes going to cost him? Just $2,200 a year. That’s a lot lower than the $15,400 he’s paying on the home in Lakewood.

If Serwatka saves that $13,000 difference every year and invests it at 6 percent annually for the next 20 years, he’ll have accumulated savings of more than $600,000 dollars.

It’s a difference Serwatka and his wife, Robin, just couldn’t ignore.

Sadly, Illinois politicians continue to push property tax rates to record levels. They are the highest in the nation, double the rate in Missouri and three times higher than those in Indiana.

*  *  *

Serwatka is confident he’s delivered on the promises he made when he took office. Residents who were looking for reforms, lower taxes and more respect from their politicians got exactly that from him

.

But in the end, the savings he produced as the mayor of a small town weren’t enough to offset the tax increases coming from the school district and the other myriad of local governments, not to mention the state itself.

Those taxes are now so high they’re chasing out even the reformers – those bold enough to buck the system in Illinois.

The reality is, Illinois’ failed policies discriminate against no one. People are being forced to do what’s best for their families. And if that means leaving, they’re doing it. 

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Amid speculation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is approaching its end and just hours after Trump told Jeff Sessions on Twitter to end the Mueller probe “right now“, ABC reports that the Mueller wants to ask President Donald Trump about obstruction of justice, citing sources close to the White House. ABC also notes that the president learned “within the last day” that the special counsel will limit the scope of questioning and, despite Rudy Giuliani’s vehement opposition, would like to ask questions both orally and written for the President to respond to.

The ABC sources report that the genesis of Trump’s early morning tweet storm was learning of Mueller’s request. Trump took to twitter in one of his strongest attacks against the federal probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, saying:

“This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”

..This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2018

It is unlikely that the Trump team will agree to Mueller’s request. Negotiations over the scope of a potential presidential interview with the special counsel have gone on for months, through several different iterations of the Trump legal team.

Rudy Giuliani, the President’s current lead attorney, told ABC News a week ago that his team had submitted a response to Mueller asking to limit the scope of an interview with Trump especially as it relates to obstruction of justice.

“We have a list of questions that are fairly narrowed but we are waiting on the special counsel’s response,” Giuliani said..

On Wednesday, Giuliani told reporters that he had received a response from the special counsel’s office without getting into details. “They took about 10 days and yesterday we got a letter back for them. Now we’re in the process of responding to their proposal,” Giuliani said.

Then, in an interview on CNN, Giuliani said that “they should render their report,” of the special counsel and his team, adding they should “Put up or shut up. The president has done anything wrong. They don’t have any evidence he did anything wrong.”

“We believe the investigation should be brought to a close … Put up or shut up,” President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani says about the Russia investigation pic.twitter.com/ifiKybi01r

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 1, 2018

Giuliani also echoed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sander’s Wednesday assertion that Trump did not command Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end the Mueller investigation in a widely circulated tweet. Giuliani and Sanders both said Trump was merely expressing himself in the tweet.

The President has said many times he would be willing to speak with Mueller but would await his legal teams guidance.

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Authored by Grace Gottschling via Campus Reform,

The Young Democratic Socialists of America organization now claims to have more than 250 chapters on campuses across the country, a dramatic increase from just 15 chapters in 2016.

YDSA is the student-focused branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which is “a political and activist organization” that seeks to “empower working people” and has several ongoing campaigns, including Medicare for All, Strong Unions, and Electoral Power.

The YDSA mission is to “build the power of students, campus communities, and youth to fight for equality, justice, and democratic socialism,” according to its constitution, which was last updated in August 2017.+

In June 2017, YDSA launched a “Fall Campus Drive” with the goal of registering 100 new chapters by the fall semester, noting that it had already expanded from just 15 chapters to 50 chapters in 27 states over the preceding year.

“When we originally launched the YDSA fall campus drive, we set the bold target of 100 campuses across the country,” the recognized chapter list states. “Currently, we’ve received over 250 campuses register for the fall drive! This explosion in interest shows that this semester will be the biggest ever for YDSA. We will be able to build a mass movement for democratic socialism and justice at campuses across the country.”

While YDSA states that more than 250 chapters are now registered, the list includes only 218 groups, 27 of which are high school chapters.

Democratic Socialist students will be convening in Minneapolis this August for YDSA’s 2018 Summer Convention, which will focus on “key decisions” for the academic year, electing new NCC members, and holding “skills trainings” where student attendees will be able to “learn from other young socialists in order to hit the ground running” during the school year.

Past summer conventions have included “Anti-Oppression Caucuses & Ally Groups” where students can share “experiences and strategies for combating oppression” and workshops on topics including “socialist feminism, history of the Labor Movement, Ecosocialism, Democratic Socialism, Social Media Strategies, and more.”

Membership in YDSA is open to any full- or part-time student (including high school students), campus workers, and “youth who accept the aims, constitution, resolutions, and the decisions of the organization,” though the organization’s constitution notes that nobody over 30 years of age may hold elective office in the organization. 

Each chapter must have a minimum of three members to qualify for official recognition, and three or more chapters can combine to form a city-wide organization (if they have 15 or more members between them) or a State Council (if they have at least 25 members total).

Notably, the constitution also stipulates specific gender- and race-based leadership quotas for the National Coordinating Committee (NCC), which oversees YDSA between annual conferences, mandating that at least half of the committee’s members must be “self-identified women or gender non-binary people,” and that at least half must also be “people of color.”

If those quotas are not met for any reason, the NCC is required to recruit additional at-large members until it achieves the required degree of diversity.

DSA supplies the YDSA chapters with materials and initiatives to support the democratic socialist movement, including an “Organizing Manual” that contains detailed instructions on “How to Support a Union Organizing Drive or Strike on Your Campus” and “Weaving Democratic Socialism Into Your Work.”

“In the case of an organizing drive or a strike, community pressure on the university is an important element in the campaign,” the handbook states. “Call to the university’s avowed commitment to freedom of debate if the administrators refuse to allow union organizers or activists equal time to compensate for anti-union activists. You may also want to flood the campus newspapers with letters to the editor in support of the union.”

The manual gives individual chapters relatively wide latitude to select their own campaigns, noting that “there are plenty of struggles that YDSA supports, such as defending affirmative action, increasing access to reproductive and sexual healthcare, including abortion, for all, ending U.S. imperialist conquest abroad, shifting away from our reliance on dirty and unhealthy energy sources, and ending environmental racism, and redirecting our collective tax dollars to benefit all of us through quality public services.”

Students at campuses with active YDSA chapters, though, say the organization is better at disrupting conservative speech than advancing its own policy agenda.

“Members of YDS at [George Washington University] are not interested in genuine activism or attempting to talk to others who disagree with them,” asserted Campus Reform Correspondent Abigail Marone. “Instead, they’re content with causing a scene without a clear message.”

“I think the group’s inability to have a cohesive message on my campus is a great representation of the democratic socialist movement’s inability to have a clear, cohesive message,” Marone added. “Candidates like Ocasio-Cortez want to get involved in as much left-wing activity as possible without even having a clear message of what they stand for or an understanding of basic policy.”

Campus Reform Correspondent Daniel Weldon, meanwhile, offered a more harrowing account of YDSA’s activities at the University of Florida.

“At the University of Florida, socialism has been growing at a staggering rate,” Weldon said. “Recently, I spoke with an elected official who will not use the word ‘capitalism’ on campus since it has become such a dirty word. In my three years on campus, groups like Young Democratic Socialists of America have ballooned in size and scope.”

“I’ve witnessed them tear down signs for conservative events I’ve hosted, attempted to shut down a Dinesh D’Souza Speech which required a police presence, and even assault a conservative student,” Weldon added. “At Florida, YDSA has pushed for the abolition of ICE, government controlled healthcare, and making UF a sanctuary campus.”

Campus Reform reached out to YDSA for comment, but has not received a response.

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Politico is out with a very early poll which estimates that former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by 7 percentage points in a head-to-head match up in 2020, according to their POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. 

A plurality of registered voters, 44 percent, said they’d choose Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while 37 percent of voters said they would vote for Trump.

The percentage of Democrats who would choose Biden — 80 percent — was slightly higher than the 78 percent of Republicans who would vote for the president‘s reelection. The former vice president, who ran for the White House in 1988 and 2008, has been floated as a 2020 contender, and Biden himself has said he’s not ruling out a third try. –Politico

Because everybody remembers how accurate polls were in the last election…

The Poll surveyed 1,993 registered voters from July 26 through July 30. 

That’s not saying much, however…

The poll also reveals that among Democrats, “an unnamed generic Democrat runs 9 points better than Biden in a match-up with Trump.” 

“89 percent of Democrats say they would vote for a generic Democrat over Trump, but only 80 percent of Democrats say they prefer Biden over Trump.”

The poll also found bipartisan support for Trump’s promise to send aid to American farmers impacted by his retaliatory tariffs. Fifty-seven percent of voters overall approve the strategy — more than twice as many as disapprove (26 percent). Among Republicans, 79 percent said they support Trump’s aid to farmers, compared to 48 percent of Democrats. –Politico

“President Trump’s decision to provide aid to farmers hurt by the trade war is a hugely popular move with rural voters,” said Morning Consult Managing Director, Tyler Sinclair. “Sixty-three percent of rural voters support the assistance. Additionally, 30 percent of this group ‘strongly’ approve of Trump’s job performance overall.” 

And when it comes to trade policy, 31% of those surveyed say the United States has benefitted less than other countries on free trade, while 26% say it has benefitted equally. 12% meanwhile, say that the US has benefitted more.

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Authored by Max Yakuboeski via CoinTelegraph.com,

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has expressed his skepticism about the value of cryptocurrencies in a New York Times Opinion piece published July 31.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Krugman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008, explains his position as a “crypto skeptic” by noting the high transaction costs and an “absence of tethering” associated with cryptocurrencies.

Krugman describes how the history of money has been slowly moving away from gold and silver coins, to banknotes, and now to credit cards and other “digital methods,” all of which served the purpose of making purchases less costly.

According to Krugman, those that celebrate cryptocurrency – which he notes has a relatively high cost of doing business – are thus “effectively celebrating the use of cutting-edge technology to set the monetary system back 300 years.” Krugman further poses the query:

“Why would you want to do that? What problem does it solve? I have yet to see a clear answer to that question.”

In regards to crypto’s lack of “tethering,” Krugman notes that “total collapse is a real possibility:”

“If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless.”

The economist goes on to note that in the future, while there might be a “potential equilibrium” where only Bitcoin — out of all cryptocurrencies — survives simply for use in “black market transactions and tax evasion,” the reality is that “disappointment will probably collapse the whole thing.”

Krugman concludes by noting that he could be wrong, adding a call to all crypto enthusiasts to prove his crypto skepticism false:

“But if you want to argue that I’m wrong, please answer the question, what problem does cryptocurrency solve? Don’t just try to shout down the skeptics with a mixture of technobabble and libertarian derp.”

Other well-known traditional financial figures and economists have shown similar pessimistic views about the nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech. Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger referred to Bitcoin this spring as “freshly harvested baby brains,” and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said in June that blockchain is a “bubble.”

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