After a long string of policy defeats, supporters of the single-use plastic straw finally scored a win yesterday when the Florida legislature passed a bill prohibiting local governments from banning plastic suckers.
In a mostly party-line vote, the Florida Senate passed HB 771, which bars cities and counties from adopting or enforcing any regulation of plastic straws for the next five years.
The bill would also require the state legislature’s in-house research organization to issue a report in December on the “data and conclusions” used by local governments when passing their straw laws. That’s a welcome provision given how often bogus straw stats are cited by legislators and city officials, or even incorporated into the text of straw bans.
Florida cities were some of the first adopters of plastic straw regulations. Miami Beach enacted a ban on beachside businesses handing out straws all the way back in 2012.
Currently, 10 Florida cities have either straw bans or more modest straw-on-request laws (which prohibit food service businesses from handing out straws unless a customer specifically requests one).
By forbidding the enforcement of straw regulations, HB 771 effectively nullifies these laws for the next five years. Barring any future legislative changes, cities can start enforcing their straw laws again come 2024.
That makes the bill’s passage a partial victory, but a welcome one nonetheless, given the unmitigated string of defeats opponents of straw bans have suffered over the past year or so.
HB 771 also offers one possible way to combat the spread of straw bans in the future by taking decisions about straws away from ban-happy city councils and turning them over to (occasionally) more sensible state legislatures.
State-level preemption laws have already helped turn back local bans on plastic bags (yesterday’s favorite target of environmentalists) in places like Minneapolis and Austin.
In addition to Florida, straw ban preemption bills have been introduced in the Colorado and Utah legislatures, although neither has passed.
Some libertarians might bristle at the idea of taking decisions away from localities. However, for those who have a low tolerance for municipal stupidity, Florida’s straw ban is good news.
Straws make up a tiny portion of America’s plastic litter, which in turn makes up a tiny portion (about 1 percent) of global plastic pollution. Banning them will have approximately zero impact on the world’s oceans.
Having passed the state House of Representatives earlier this week, HB 771 goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for signing.
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The mainstream media continues to try to convince all of us that the U.S. economy is “booming”, but meanwhile the number of homeless people is setting all-time record highs in major cities all over the nation. The recent article that I published about how wealthy elitists on the west coast are freaking out as hordes of homeless people take over their neighborhoods received a tremendous amount of attention, but nobody has a worse problem with homelessness than New York City does. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, approximately 14 percent of all the homeless people in the entire country currently live in New York City…
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s most recent assessment report, the number of people experiencing homelessness has been rising. The HUD’s annual survey found that on a single night in January 2018, there were a total of 552,830 homeless people across the country. New York City had 78,676 — or about 14 percent of the nation’s homeless population.
That number, 78,676, was a brand new all-time record high.
And more records are being broken during the early part of this year.
On Tuesday, the Coalition for the Homeless issued a brand new State of the Homeless report for 2019. According to that report, the number of people living in homeless shelters in New York City has been breaking record after record…
If found that in February 2019, an average of 63,615 men, women, and children slept in New York City shelters each night, just shy of the all-time record set in January.
While the number of families decreased slightly, the number of homeless single adults continues to increase.
An all-time record 18,212 single adults slept in shelters each night in February 2019, up 150 percent from 2009. Between September 2018 and April 2019, the number of single adults in DHS shelters reached a new nightly record high 32 times, according to the report.
If this is what an “economic recovery” looks like, then I shudder to think what will happen when the next recession hits.
That represents a 61 percent increase since fiscal year 2002.
Obviously very little of the money being made on Wall Street is trickling down to those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. The stock market may be soaring, but more people than ever in New York do not have a place to sleep at night.
In the State of the Homeless report, Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo both received an “F” for their handling of the homelessness crisis. Obviously this did not please either of them, and both of them are trying to defend their records.
New York City officials received the go-ahead to open a homeless shelter in an old hotel in midtown Manhattan – one which happens to be back-to-back with one of the most luxurious and expensive condo buildings in the world.
A coalition of homeowners on West 58th Street sought an order to block a move by the city and its agencies to open a shelter in the former Park Savoy hotel at 158 West 58th. Among other things, they argued that the building was not up to fire safety codes and that it would create a public nuisance.
The West 58th Street Coalition, on its Facebook page, says its neighborhood is “under threat” by the shelter plan.
“While we understand the need to shelter the city’s homeless, we believe the residents on our block deserve to be consulted before one of our buildings is filled with recently released parolees,” the coalition wrote in an April 2018 position statement.
It is easy to laugh at the plight of these condo owners, but there is nothing funny about America’s rapidly exploding homelessness crisis.
In the old days, strong family units provided a national safety net that the federal government could never match. If someone was having a really hard time, another member of the extended family would take them in. But today the traditional family unit is under attack from a thousand different directions, and many homeless people literally don’t have anyone that they can turn to.
In addition, more Americans are hooked on legal and illegal drugs today than ever before in American history, and that is greatly contributing to the homelessness crisis. A very large percentage of the homeless are addicts, and this is particularly true on the west coast.
Of course many that are living on the streets have simply had a run of bad luck. Unless your family is independently wealthy, it is likely that you have had some tough times in your own life. We should never look down on those that are hurting, because with a few bad breaks many of us could end up on the streets ourselves.
We live at a time when literally everything in our society seems to be coming apart. And unless a miracle happens, things are going to get much, much worse in the months and years ahead.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GO2zRa Tyler Durden
From the excellent Twitter account Ninja Economics comes the incredible chart below showing that “for the first time ever there are now more people in the world older than 65 than younger than 5.”
At first blush, this might seem like a vaguely interesting fact and not much else. But in reality, this development will affect virtually every aspect of our future lives. First and foremost, it means that the global human population will start to fall, since aging populations have fewer kids (and as Reason‘s Ronald Bailey notes, global fertility rates have been falling for years). We’ll likely reach a peak population of under 10 billion people around 2070.
The impact on the world’s economy will be staggering, especially since there are effectively no known cases where long-term economic growth takes place against the backdrop of a shrinking population. Individual countries might prosper if they can lure more people to move within their borders, but the whole planet may start to resemble Japan, which is 30 years into its “lost decade” of weak economic growth and population decline. That means things will get weird:
To get a sense of what happens when a country ages dramatically and doesn’t replenish its population with younger residents, look to ultra-restrictionist Japan, which is the prime example of a First World “demographic disaster.” Japan, which has fewer people than it did in 2000, is suffering a slow-motion economic collapse characterized by weak-to-nonexistent economic growth and an erosion of quality of life. As The Weekly Standard‘s Jonathan V. Last wrote in What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, Japan’s “continuously falling birthrates” has given rise to “a subculture that dresses dogs like babies and pushes them around in carriages, and a booming market in hyper-realistic-looking robot babies.”
The aging of the planet definitely calls even more attention to the problems with old-age, social-welfare entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by younger workers. Social Security, for instance, will be insolvent by the mid-2030s. As Eric Boehm writes,
Maintaining Social Security’s long-term solvency would require “the equivalent of immediately raising payroll taxes by 22 percent, reducing all benefits by about 17 percent, reducing new benefits by 20 percent, or some combination of the three,” according to a [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget] analysis.
What will an older world look like, besides more wrinkly, liver-spotted, and, if current trends hold, STD-ridden? It’s not at all clear. One of the great things about capitalism and free markets is that they are constantly changing what gets produced and consumed. “Creative destruction,” Joseph Schumpeter famously wrote, is “the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” For all the recent talk about “late capitalism,” the increasingly capitalistic global economy that has emerged over the past half-century or more has been pretty great for most people. In fact, for the first time ever, more than half of the world’s population “live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered ‘middle class’ or ‘rich.'”
That is no small achievement and it should give us some faith that we’ll figure out a way to increase living standards even in a world whose population is shrinking. Then again, politics might rear its ugly head and put the kibosh on the global market order. Here’s Schumpeter again (writing in the early 1940s but sounding like he’s eavesdropping on the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination): “The public mind has by now so thoroughly grown out of humor with [capitalism] as to make condemnation of capitalism and all its works almost a requirement of the etiquette of discussion.”
"For the first time ever there are now more people in the world older than 65 than younger than 5." pic.twitter.com/uug6WNDH4I
Wall Street legend and former special adviser to President Donald Trump, billionaire Carl Icahn, is out starkly warning against the idea of modern monetary theory, according to Bloomberg. Icahn believes that inflation could revive and “spin out of control” if the tenets of modern monetary theory are embraced.
This makes Icahn the latest in a long line of economic voices to speak out against the progressive “economic doctrine” – if you can even call it that – that has dominated the financial news headlines over the last year.
The idea that a country can’t go broke simply because it prints its own currency has backing from such economic intellectual heavyweights as freshman congresswoman and socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The idea that the country can run larger budget deficits as long as prices stay low has made MMT one of the proposed solutions for expensive proposed legislation, like AOC’s Green New Deal.
Icahn, who has been around slightly longer than AOC, disagrees:
“You can print money up to a point, but after that point, it could become very dangerous. We don’t want to hit a wall that you can’t recover from. Once you get into an inflationary spiral, it’s very difficult to get out of it — and therein lies the danger.”
Icahn’s said three years ago that the obsession with the budget deficit was “ridiculous” and that America’s status as the global reserve currency would help alleviate some concerns over the deficit.
But his unwillingness to accept MMT shows that even the “reserve currency the world” has boundaries and limitations. Icahn’s comments come after Warren Buffett said this year he’s also not a fan of modern monetary theory because it could lead to spiraling inflation. Dozens of policymakers and leaders have also spoken out about MMT. Recent critiques have even come from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde. We can’t help but think that when these inflation loving central bankers are the ones critiquing your money printing aspirations, maybe it is a little too much.
However, there are some economists supporting the idea. Olivier Blanchard, the former IMF chief economist, suggested that the money could be used for environmental purposes while bond investor Bill Gross, who just slunk out the back door after a couple years of awful performance retired, said the US could “easily double its deficit”.
The budget gap under Trump has continued to widen and is forecasted to reach $1.1 trillion by 2022, according to the CBO. That’s equivalent to 4.7% of GDP compared to an average of 2.9% over the past half century.
While the obvious result of MMT would be inflation accelerating, if not spiraling out of control, it is these very same basic economic principles that the academics in charge of monetary theory in this country seem unequipped to understand. Our hope is that they listen to some of the actual adults in the room, like Icahn, who are doing their best to guide them in the right direction.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VKvnnm Tyler Durden
From the excellent Twitter account Ninja Economics comes the incredible chart below showing that “for the first time ever there are now more people in the world older than 65 than younger than 5.”
At first blush, this might seem like a vaguely interesting fact and not much else. But in reality, this development will affect virtually every aspect of our future lives. First and foremost, it means that the global human population will start to fall, since aging populations have fewer kids (and as Reason‘s Ronald Bailey notes, global fertility rates have been falling for years). We’ll likely reach a peak population of under 10 billion people around 2070.
The impact on the world’s economy will be staggering, especially since there are effectively no known cases where long-term economic growth takes place against the backdrop of a shrinking population. Individual countries might prosper if they can lure more people to move within their borders, but the whole planet may start to resemble Japan, which is 30 years into its “lost decade” of weak economic growth and population decline. That means things will get weird:
To get a sense of what happens when a country ages dramatically and doesn’t replenish its population with younger residents, look to ultra-restrictionist Japan, which is the prime example of a First World “demographic disaster.” Japan, which has fewer people than it did in 2000, is suffering a slow-motion economic collapse characterized by weak-to-nonexistent economic growth and an erosion of quality of life. As The Weekly Standard‘s Jonathan V. Last wrote in What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, Japan’s “continuously falling birthrates” has given rise to “a subculture that dresses dogs like babies and pushes them around in carriages, and a booming market in hyper-realistic-looking robot babies.”
The aging of the planet definitely calls even more attention to the problems with old-age, social-welfare entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by younger workers. Social Security, for instance, will be insolvent by the mid-2030s. As Eric Boehm writes,
Maintaining Social Security’s long-term solvency would require “the equivalent of immediately raising payroll taxes by 22 percent, reducing all benefits by about 17 percent, reducing new benefits by 20 percent, or some combination of the three,” according to a [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget] analysis.
What will an older world look like, besides more wrinkly, liver-spotted, and, if current trends hold, STD-ridden? It’s not at all clear. One of the great things about capitalism and free markets is that they are constantly changing what gets produced and consumed. “Creative destruction,” Joseph Schumpeter famously wrote, is “the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” For all the recent talk about “late capitalism,” the increasingly capitalistic global economy that has emerged over the past half-century or more has been pretty great for most people. In fact, for the first time ever, more than half of the world’s population “live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered ‘middle class’ or ‘rich.'”
That is no small achievement and it should give us some faith that we’ll figure out a way to increase living standards even in a world whose population is shrinking. Then again, politics might rear its ugly head and put the kibosh on the global market order. Here’s Schumpeter again (writing in the early 1940s but sounding like he’s eavesdropping on the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination): “The public mind has by now so thoroughly grown out of humor with [capitalism] as to make condemnation of capitalism and all its works almost a requirement of the etiquette of discussion.”
"For the first time ever there are now more people in the world older than 65 than younger than 5." pic.twitter.com/uug6WNDH4I
In the year 1890, according to census records, my great-great-grandfather was spending the final years of his life living with one of his children on a farm in Choctaw County, Oklahoma.
I’ve spent most of the last twenty years doing some hardcore research into my family history– and I’ve identified records going all the way back to 1250 in England.
And one common theme that I’ve noticed: when people reached a certain age, they almost invariably moved in with their kids and grandkids.
This is what ‘retirement’ used to mean; it was simply expected that younger generations would look after older generations.
And back then, since households were quite large, there were usually 4-6 other people in the home to look after great-great-grandpa.
This arrangement might sound quaint and outdated. But it’s still the fundamental premise behind many retirement plans, including Social Security in the Land of the Free.
It’s still the younger generations taking care of the older generations. That’s the way the system functions: younger people pay taxes to fund benefits for older people who have retired.
So you can see the similarities:
Hundreds of years ago it would be your kids doing the work to take care of you in retirement. Today it’s everyone’s kids, collectively, doing the work to take care of every retiree.
Hundreds of years ago it took several other people in a household to care for the elderly. Today it takes a certain number of workers paying into the system to support each retiree receiving benefits.
They call this the ‘worker-to-retiree ratio’.
And the Social Security Administration (SSA) has said that they need a MINIMUM of 2.8 workers paying into the system for every one retiree collecting benefits.
You can probably see that maintaining this delicate balance requires steady population growth; every generation has to be large enough to support the previous generation.
If population growth trends get too far out of whack, it means there will either be too few workers, or too many retirees…
And that’s exactly what’s happening now: people are simply having fewer children.
In the Land of the Free, birth rates are the lowest levels EVER since they started keeping records decades ago.
And this has been a long-term problem: fertility rates were already in decline when the 2008 financial crisis accelerated the trend.
Researchers estimate that 4.8 million babies were never born as a result of the Great Recession.
Some of the reasons are pretty obvious– kids are expensive. And they aren’t getting any cheaper.
You used to be able to raise a family on a single income. Today, the average household can afford one, maybe two kids. And that’s with both parents working.
Unsurprisingly, as the fertility rate has fallen over the years, so has Social Security’s worker-to-retiree ratio.
It’s already dangerously low.
And next year there will be just 2.7 workers paying into Social Security for each retiree – below the minimum necessary to sustain the program. After that it will keep falling.
In 2034, when Social Security estimates its trust funds will run out of money, there will only be 2.3 workers per retiree.
And just to pile it on, technological automation is poised to radically change the workforce.
In 10-15 years, you’ll see entire professions replaced by robots and AI… neither of which pays into the Social Security system.
It’s not just the US that’s grappling with this either.
Finland’s fertility rate is below the US rate. They based their healthcare system on the same faulty assumption, that the population will continue to grow.
Yet now there aren’t enough young people paying into the system to support the older people who use more healthcare.
Most of Europe is even worse off. The combined EU fertility rate is just 1.59 babies over the course of a woman’s lifetime, well below replacement levels.
Japan is far more restrictive on immigration compared to the US and EU, and is on the cutting edge of automation. Japan’s fertility rate is just 1.4 and it has one of the oldest populations in the world.
The one-child policy that China had in place for decades is already putting a strain on the burgeoning middle class. By 2050, 44% of the population is expected to be dependent elderly.
We talk about this issue so much because it’s important to recognize that monumental change is coming. The entire way retirement is structured, since long before Social Security, is coming to an end.
You can’t rely on the next generation for retirement anymore. To be secure, you have to take matters into your own hands.
If you’re retired now, or are about to retire, you might be fine. You can probably ride it out before the entire system has to reset.
But if you’re 50 or younger, Social Security will run out of money before you’re able to start collecting.
The younger you are, the surer you can be that these retirement systems won’t be available to you. But that also means you have time to do something about it.
Several countries have options for self-directed retirement accounts. In the US, a solo-401(k) is a great option for anyone with side or self-employment income.
And in addition to the flexibility and freedom you have to invest with a solo-401(k), you get to contribute money before it’s taxed.
That’s important, because unfortunately, you are still going to be expected to pay into Social Security, even though you might never collect it.
And as the politicians try desperately to save these programs, you can expect to pay higher taxes.
Any money you can save on taxes and funnel into your private retirement account will be compounded year after year instead of flushed down the toilet.
And there is absolutely no downside in doing this. Worst case scenario: Social Security is miraculously saved, and you have extra money for your retirement. Not exactly a bad outcome.
Check out our recent podcast to see how you could use a solo-401(k) to tuck some extra money away for retirement.
The Trump administration has asked Congress for $4.5 billion in funding to address the “humanitarian and security crisis” at America’s southern border with Mexico.
The funding is needed due to increased border-crossing, according to Russ Vought, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who told Congress that Border Patrol has apprehended more than 360,000 migrants through April of this year.
“This is over 187,000 more than during the same period in FY 2018, and just 35,500 below the number apprehended for all of FY 2018,” Vought wrote in the letter requesting the funding.
The request comes several months after President Donald Trump used executive authority, including the declaration of a national emergency, to obtain more than $8 billion in funding for his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. But that money, which Trump took from the Pentagon’s military construction budget and other sources, can only be used for certain purposes. The money that Vought requested will not be used for the border wall, according to CNBC.
So what will it be used for? A White House fact sheet says $3.3 billion would go to “humanitarian assistance.” Of that amount, $2.8 billion would be used to raise the Department of Health and Human Services’ capacity to house unaccompanied migrant children, while another $273 million would be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security so that agency can improve its ability to process migrants. Aside from the $3.3 billion, “$1.1 billion will go to border operations, including personnel expenses, additional detention beds, and operations combating human smuggling and trafficking,” the fact sheet says, in addition to $178 million for “mission support.”
Vought’s letter claims apprehensions at the southern border “are expected to surpass one million by the end of the year,” which would be more than double last year’s number. “As we’ve been saying for months and months, the situation at the border becomes more and more dire each day,” a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday, according to Politico. “The bottom line here is that the migration flow and the resulting humanitarian crisis is rapidly overwhelming the federal government’s ability to respond.”
The request is “an opportunity for House Democrats to put down their partisan rhetoric and embrace the need for more DHS funding,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R–Ala.), the House Homeland Security Committee’s ranking member, according to USA Today.
But it’s unclear whether Democrats will comply with the Trump administration’s request. “The Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5 billion emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies, including bailing out ICE for overspending on detention beds and expanding family detention,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey (D–N.Y.) said in a statement, The Washington Post reported. “Locking up people who pose no threat to the community for ever-longer periods of time is not a solution to the problems at the border.” Lowery did say she’d review the White House’s request.
It’s worth noting that for all its emphasis on the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, the Trump administration’s actions often speak louder than words. Just this week, for instance, Trump ordered new fees on asylum applications as part of a plan that’s likely to backfire, as Reason‘s Billy Binion detailed.
And the request for more funding wouldn’t even be necessary if the Trump administration realized that detaining immigrants isn’t the answer. We need more immigration, not less.
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The Trump administration has asked Congress for $4.5 billion in funding to address the “humanitarian and security crisis” at America’s southern border with Mexico.
The funding is needed due to increased border-crossing, according to Russ Vought, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who told Congress that Border Patrol has apprehended more than 360,000 migrants through April of this year.
“This is over 187,000 more than during the same period in FY 2018, and just 35,500 below the number apprehended for all of FY 2018,” Vought wrote in the letter requesting the funding.
The request comes several months after President Donald Trump used executive authority, including the declaration of a national emergency, to obtain more than $8 billion in funding for his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. But that money, which Trump took from the Pentagon’s military construction budget and other sources, can only be used for certain purposes. The money that Vought requested will not be used for the border wall, according to CNBC.
So what will it be used for? A White House fact sheet says $3.3 billion would go to “humanitarian assistance.” Of that amount, $2.8 billion would be used to raise the Department of Health and Human Services’ capacity to house unaccompanied migrant children, while another $273 million would be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security so that agency can improve its ability to process migrants. Aside from the $3.3 billion, “$1.1 billion will go to border operations, including personnel expenses, additional detention beds, and operations combating human smuggling and trafficking,” the fact sheet says, in addition to $178 million for “mission support.”
Vought’s letter claims apprehensions at the southern border “are expected to surpass one million by the end of the year,” which would be more than double last year’s number. “As we’ve been saying for months and months, the situation at the border becomes more and more dire each day,” a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday, according to Politico. “The bottom line here is that the migration flow and the resulting humanitarian crisis is rapidly overwhelming the federal government’s ability to respond.”
The request is “an opportunity for House Democrats to put down their partisan rhetoric and embrace the need for more DHS funding,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R–Ala.), the House Homeland Security Committee’s ranking member, according to USA Today.
But it’s unclear whether Democrats will comply with the Trump administration’s request. “The Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5 billion emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies, including bailing out ICE for overspending on detention beds and expanding family detention,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey (D–N.Y.) said in a statement, The Washington Post reported. “Locking up people who pose no threat to the community for ever-longer periods of time is not a solution to the problems at the border.” Lowery did say she’d review the White House’s request.
It’s worth noting that for all its emphasis on the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, the Trump administration’s actions often speak louder than words. Just this week, for instance, Trump ordered new fees on asylum applications as part of a plan that’s likely to backfire, as Reason‘s Billy Binion detailed.
And the request for more funding wouldn’t even be necessary if the Trump administration realized that detaining immigrants isn’t the answer. We need more immigration, not less.
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A leaked FBI document reveals that members of Antifa were plotting to purchase guns from a “Mexico-based cartel associate known as Cobra Commander,” and “stage an armed rebellion at the border,” according to the San Diego Union Tribune, which received a copy of the unclassified report.
When federal law enforcement officials last year began collecting dossiers on mostly American journalists, activists and lawyers in Tijuana involved with the migrant caravan, one part of their investigation focused on an alleged plot by a drug cartel to sell guns to protesters, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report.
A Dec. 18, 2018, document from the FBI, obtained by the Union-Tribune, specifies an alleged plan for activists to purchase guns from a “Mexico-based cartel associate known as Cobra Commander,” or Ivan Riebeling. –San Diego Union Tribune
Ivan Reibeling is a Tijuana resident named in an FBI report warning of a potential armed disruption at the border. Courtesy of Ivan Reibeling.
The document warns that “anti-fascist activists” had “planned to disrupt U.S. law enforcement and military security operations at the US/Mexican border.”
Of note, the unclassified document labeled “law enforcement sensitive” is a portion of an ongoing investigation in which charges have yet to be filed.
“This is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence,” reads the six-page report. “Receiving agencies are requested not to take action based on this raw reporting without prior coordination with the FBI.”
The FBI sent its report with “priority” to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Administration, among other agencies.
Two people named in the report, Ivan Riebeling and Evan Duke, said the accusations are untrue and illogical.
Duke said he never met Riebeling and that Riebeling was not someone he would have associated with. –San Diego Union Tribune
The FBI report also says that a group of pro-migrant activists in Tijuana supporting the recent caravans “were encouraged to bring personally owned weapons to the border and the group also intended to purchase weapons from a Mexico-based cartel associate known as Cobra Commander, AKA the Mexican Rambo, and smuggle the weapons into the United States.”
Mexican Rambo says the FBI’s report is not logical, and that he’s not in the carte.
“It doesn’t make any sense that someone from the United States would purchase guns in Mexico. And the Hondurans certainly didn’t bring money to buy guns. It doesn’t make any sense; in fact it’s extremely absurd to say the Hondurans wanted to attack the United States at the border,” said Reibeling, who said he had helped an early caravan of mostly women and children who arrived in Tijuana – only to quickly decide that he “no longer wanted to help Hondurans” after he found them selling some of the items he provided them such as blankets, water and shoes.
“They were exchanging these items for drugs and it made me mad, and I no longer wanted to help them and I was vocal about it,” he said.
Reibeling then posted a video online in which he encouraged drug cartel members to “hunt down” migrants and take them to Mexican immigration authorities.
Reibeling said he was never detained or interrogated by the FBI about his involvement with the migrant caravan. He said he took no part in trying to sell guns to anyone and that he’s not a cartel member.
“I am not cartel. I don’t sell drugs. I don’t sell arms,” said Riebeling. “I’m a revolutionary. A man who believes in his ideals, and I’m going to defend Mexico.”
The unclassified FBI report identifies Riebeling as being “associated with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel,” but Riebeling, a Tijuana resident, said he is not.
“If I were selling drugs, or guns, they would kill me,” said Riebeling.
“The government of the United States knows perfectly well that I am not a member of any cartel,” said Riebeling. “I have associates with several of the cartels, yes I do, but I am not a narco-trafficker and they know that.”
Evan Duke, the other person named in the report, says Riebeling was not someone he would associate with because he didn’t trust him, and because Riebeling had expressed negative views over social media about migrants in the caravan.
“Here I find the government again trying to tie me into some (stuff) I wasn’t involved in,” said Duke, an anti-Trump activist whose work in Tijuana was monitored by federal authorities.
“We were warned to look out for him,” Duke said of Riebeling. “We took the precaution to find out who he was and where he was, but we never had any contact with him. And we never saw him around the migrant caravan.”
Duke thinks it might be possible that “right-wing conspiracy groups” fed false information to authorities about him – noting that a North Dakota radio talk-show host bragged on air about reporting he and his colleagues to law enforcement.
In mid-November, Duke and a group of activists began renting a house in Tijuana and hosting about 25 volunteers at a time working to counter what they viewed as the U.S. government’s violation of asylum seekers’ human rights.
The FBI’s report says the rental house in Tijuana was guarded by armed group members.
Riebeling, who also goes by the names Ivan del Campo, Ivan Mariano Martin del Campo and Jose Ivan Reiveling Sierra, has criminal records in Mexico and the United States, according to a Mexican state police document and confirmed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. –San Diego Union Tribune
Who’s telling the truth?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WdsLv0 Tyler Durden
Despite his best efforts, Fed Chair Powell managed to spoil the party with his use of one of The Fed’s favorite words – “transitory” – signaling that expectations for rate-cuts predicated on inflation staying low are perhaps not as set in stone as the market believes.
The hawkish tilt was very evident in the market’s implied rate-change pricing…
Additionally, Powell commented on “elevated (but not extreme) asset values.”
If Powell is so sure the decline in core inflation is transitory, why wasn’t this mentioned in the press statement?
