“No Child Should Feel Stigmatized”: California Bill Would Punish Retailers With Separate Boys And Girls Departments
A bill introduced by a California Democratic lawmaker would punish stores that separate toys, clothing and other children’s items into separate boys and girls sections – forcing them to pay a $1000 fine, according to The Federalist Papers.
“I was inspired to introduce this bill after 8-year-old Britten asked, ‘Why should a store tell me what a girl’s shirt or toy is?” said California State Assembly member Evan Low of Silicon Valley, who unveiled AB 2826 last week. “Her bill will help children express themselves freely and without bias. We need to let kids be kids.”
Via a press release by Low:
Clothing and toys sections of department stores that are separated along gender lines pigeonhole children. No child should feel stigmatized for wearing a dinosaur shirt or playing with a Barbie doll, and separating items that are traditionally marketed for either girls or boys makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare products. It also incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.
The bill states:
This bill would require a retail department store with 500 or more employees to maintain undivided areas of its sales floor where, if it sells childcare articles, children’s clothing, or toys, all childcare items, all clothing for children, or all toys, regardless of whether a particular item has traditionally been marketed for either girls or for boys, shall be displayed. Beginning on January 1, 2023, the bill would make a retail department store that fails to correct a violation of these provisions within 30 days of receiving written notice of the violation from the Attorney General liable for a civil penalty of $1,000, as provided.
…
(a) A retail department store shall maintain one, undivided area of its sales floor where, if it sells childcare articles, all childcare articles, regardless of whether a particular item has traditionally been marketed for either girls or for boys, shall be displayed.
(b) A retail department store shall maintain one, undivided area of its sales floor where, if it sells children’s clothing, all clothing for children, regardless of whether a particular item has traditionally been marketed for either girls or for boys, shall be displayed.
(c) A retail department store shall maintain one, undivided area of its sales floor where, if it sells toys, all toys, regardless of whether a particular item has traditionally been marketed for either girls or for boys, shall be displayed.
Yet another ‘quirk’ for California retailers to love about the Golden State.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D–Hawaii) presidential campaign hasn’t made a lot of headlines lately. Until today! The Hawaiian representative has just won her first delegate.
Gabbard scored 103 of the 351 votes cast in the American Samoa caucus. At just shy of 30 percent of the vote, that is enough to win her one of the island territory’s six delegates.
That wasn’t enough for Gabbard to win the caucus outright. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg won 49.9 percent of the vote, giving him four delegates.
It’s still a victory for Gabbard’s long-shot presidential bid that’s so far failed to expand outside an eclectic base of voters who have responded to the candidate’s laser-like focus on opposing intervention abroad.
Winning a delegate has an added benefit for Gabbard. It might earn her a spot on the next Democratic debate.
If Tulsi Gabbard gets a delegate out of American Samoa, as it appears she has done, she will likely qualify for the next Democratic debate. We don't have new debate rules yet, but party has been inviting any candidate who gets a delegate.
Already, staffers for the Democratic National Committee are throwing cold water on that idea, saying the threshold for future debates will be raised.
We have two more debates– of course the threshold will go up. By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.
It would be a shame to keep Gabbard off the stage. Despite her failure to gain traction with voters, Gabbard’s presence at the debates has allowed her to inject an anti-war message into conversations that have focused almost entirely on domestic issues.
If allowed onstage, she could even reprise her role as debate stage assassin, issuing devastating takedowns of other candidates. (It happened to Kamala Harris. It could happen to you, Michael Bloomberg.)
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People have always wondered what makes America so paranoid. The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about it in 1964 in a famous Harper’s essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” that he later expanded into a book. He took aim at all the usual suspects: Joe McCarthy going on about “a great conspiracy on a scale so immense,” turn-of-the-century Populists warning of international bankers seeking to crucify Americans on a cross of gold, antebellum Know-Nothings raving about Catholics and the Pope, and so on.
But one aspect Hofstadter didn’t address is why.
Why is it that Americans are so quick to blame their problems on others instead of themselves? Rather than analyzing their society in a calm and sensible way, why do they continually go in search of mysterious foreign cabals?
The question has never been more relevant than in an age of Russia, Russia, Russia. If Joe Biden is sagging at the polls, if Bernie Sanders is surging, or if Donald Trump is seemingly headed for a second term, then it can only mean one thing: the Kremlin is at it again. As the New York Times declared in all seriousness in explaining why Sanders and Trump are benefiting at Biden’s expense, it’s because they “represent the most divergent ends of their respective parties, and both are backed by supporters known more for their passion than their policy rigor, which makes them ripe for exploitation by Russian trolls, disinformation specialists, and hackers for hire seeking to widen divisions in American society.”
Since Russia finds it easier to manipulate Americans when they gravitate to the extremes, that’s where it somehow causes them to wind up.
Or so corporate media assure us. But where does such paranoid nonsense come from and why does the press bombard us with it night and day?
Although Hofstadter traced the problem back to the mid-nineteenth century, we can trace it back even farther – all the way, in fact, to the nation’s founding. Indeed, we might argue, with only slight exaggeration, that it began with a single individual: James Madison.
Madison, of course, is the wealthy Virginia slaveowner who played a leading role in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was an equally important figure in the great ratification debate that followed immediately after. He wrote 29 of the 85 newspaper articles known as the Federalist Papers, which expounded the new plan of government to his fellow countrymen.
And he authored the all-important Federalist No. 10, the essay that political scientists never tire of quoting, which argues that democracy must be endlessly checked and balanced against itself in order to prevent Americans from coming together in “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project.”
A Bernie supporter he was not. But Madison was even pithier in an October 1787 letter to Thomas Jefferson in which he summed up the meaning of checks and balances and separation of powers in a single sentence.
“Divide et impera,”he wrote, “the reprobated axiom of tyranny, is under certain qualifications, the only policy, by which a republic can be administered on just principles.
These twenty-five words tell you everything you need to know about American politics, including why they’re now in such trouble. Divide et impera, Latin for “divide and conquer,” is Madison’s ironic justification for dividing government up into separate executive, legislative, and judicial functions and then pitting them against one another so as to neutralize democracy’s most dangerous tendencies.
The idea is to structure the polity in such a way that it ends up more rational and moderate than any of its components. But divide et impera leads to a paradox. If, as the Preamble to the Constitution states, “we the people” are the prime movers in the new republic, able to “ordain and establish” new constitutions and destroy old ones in the bargain like the 1783 Articles of Confederation, then what happens once they undergo the self-division and conquest that Madison describes? Are they still “we the people”? Or are they now an agglomeration of splintered sub-groups without any sense of collective democratic identity or will?
Anyone who studies American fragmentation will suspect it’s the latter. But that leads to another question. Psychologists tell us that a healthy, well-balanced adult is one whose intellect, emotions, and drives come together to form a balanced and integrated whole. Since the individual is in charge of all his faculties, he’s able to marshal his resources so as to solve problems, work creatively, and process information clearly, logically, and accurately.
But if those same faculties are fragmented and mutually at odds, the opposite occurs. Instead of marshalling his resource, the individual is paralyzed and confused. Instead of seeing the world as it is, he shies at phantoms of his own making. As a Bosnian psychologist named Vito Zepinic explained a few years ago, “the vulnerable self-structure of traumatized individuals” leads to “difficulties in self-regulation (self-esteem maintenance, lower tolerance levels, and the sense of self-discontinuity)” and “frequent upsurges of anxiety/fear, depression, and specific fears or phobias regarding the external world…”
What holds for individual patients also holds for a collective personality like the United States. Since 2000, it has suffered repeated traumas in the form of war, terrorism, military defeat, financial crisis, and stolen elections, the effect of which has been to take Madisonian self-disintegration and render it even more debilitating. “Difficulties in self-regulation” are what happens after decades of corruption and gridlock. Problems with “self-esteem maintenance” lead to an obsession with making America great again. “Lower tolerance levels” give rise to fears of alien hordes overrunning the border. “Phobias regarding the external world” are another term for mass paranoia about Russian agents lurking behind every bush and beneath every bed.
The upshot is a country that is lost, disoriented, and unable to tell where reality begins and fantasy leaves off. When the Washington Post recently reported that Russia is working behind the scenes to boost the Sanders campaign, a sensible person would have demanded to see the evidence. But not Bernie. To the contrary, he snapped to attention even though there was no evidence to be had and denounced Putin as an “autocratic thug” who should “stay out of American elections.”
Similarly, when CBS News asked Biden why he was doing so poorly, he replied that it’s because “the Russians don’t want me to be the nominee … they like Bernie.” When a reporter asked Pete Buttigieg what the Russias were looking to accomplish in the 2020 election, he explained with equal confidence: they “want chaos.”
They can’t process information concerning what Russia is really up to and therefore make up horror stories to scare themselves in the dark. Instead of exposing a petty imperialist like Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post’s owner, they allow themselves to be manipulated.
The upshot is a democracy that is too weak and fragmented to govern itself effectively. The big question is how to overcome Madisonian self-division so as to render democracy coherent and whole. But that’s a subject for another essay.
“Ground Zero For Trade” – Port Of Long Beach Warns Of Shipping Slump From China
Investors are grossly underestimating the potential economic impact of Covid-19 as the first signs of China’s supply chain meltdown are now washing ashore on US West Coast ports.
The Port of Long Beach, the second-largest containerized port in the US, has had two top officials warn in the last several weeks of chilling effects of supply chain disruptions from China.
Last week, the Deputy Executive Director of Administration and Operations for the Port of Long Beach Noel Hacegaba warned China’s economic paralysis led to the increase of blank sails between China and the US. He said port activity plunged in January and February, with expected weakness to continue through March.
Hacegaba said the slowdown at Long Beach is starting to hit the local economy around the port. He said it could only be a matter of time before it triggers a broader slowdown in the region, and even maybe in the overall US economy.
As we’ve noted in many pieces of creaking global supply chains fast emerging in China and spreading outwards, Deutsche Bank’s senior European economist Clemente Delucia last month pointed out in a report titled “The impact of the coronavirus: A supply-chain analysis” that the US is overly exposed to a crashing China economy.
As for the second Long Beach official, Bloomberg quoted Mario Cordero, executive director of the port, who said cargo volumes are expected to slump 9% YoY in February due to declining shipments from China.
Cordero said February’s YoY loss is nearly double of 2019’s decline of 5.4%, which has already resulted in a 50% reduction in labor at the port. He said the East Asia shipping route accounts for 90% of shipments through the port.
“The port of Long Beach is ground zero for trade,” warns Cordero. “There was uncertainty with the trade war, but the coronavirus has taken it to chaotic.”
Downward pressure from supply chain disruptions in China has now spilled over into the rest of the world. The transmission mechanism to the US is West Coast ports. The port Long Beach handles $200 billion in trade annually and supports 2.6 million trade-related jobs across the country, including almost 600,000 in Southern California.
As for other West Coast ports, reports of a containerized volume declines from China are inevitable. These ports are a critical artery of the US economy’s transportation infrastructure and essential for the flow of imports and exports, representing about 12.5% of US GDP.
A slowdown of containerized volume at Long Beach and other West Coast ports could suggest a broader economic downturn is ahead for the US economy.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D–Hawaii) presidential campaign hasn’t made a lot of headlines lately. Until today! The Hawaiian representative has just won her first delegate.
Gabbard scored 103 of the 351 votes cast in the American Samoa caucus. At just shy of 30 percent of the vote, that is enough to win her one of the island territory’s six delegates.
That wasn’t enough for Gabbard to win the caucus outright. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg won 49.9 percent of the vote, giving him four delegates.
It’s still a victory for Gabbard’s long-shot presidential bid that’s so far failed to expand outside an eclectic base of voters who have responded to the candidate’s laser-like focus on opposing intervention abroad.
Winning a delegate has an added benefit for Gabbard. It might earn her a spot on the next Democratic debate.
If Tulsi Gabbard gets a delegate out of American Samoa, as it appears she has done, she will likely qualify for the next Democratic debate. We don't have new debate rules yet, but party has been inviting any candidate who gets a delegate.
Already, staffers for the Democratic National Committee are throwing cold water on that idea, saying the threshold for future debates will be raised.
We have two more debates– of course the threshold will go up. By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.
It would be a shame to keep Gabbard off the stage. Despite her failure to gain traction with voters, Gabbard’s presence at the debates has allowed her to inject an anti-war message into conversations that have focused almost entirely on domestic issues.
If allowed onstage, she could even reprise her role as debate stage assassin, issuing devastating takedowns of other candidates. (It happened to Kamala Harris. It could happen to you, Michael Bloomberg.)
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China Composite PMI Crashes To Record Lows As Services Economy Implodes
Stagnating consumption amid the coronavirus epidemic has had a great impact on China’s service sector in February, as one would expect.
February PMI data signalled the first reduction in business activity across China’s service sector on record due to restrictions implemented to contain the recent coronavirus outbreak. Firms across all sectors reported on the damaging effect that the virus was having on the economy via company closures and travel restrictions, with total new orders also falling at a record pace. Restrictions around travel also impacted firms’ ability to source workers, leading a renewed fall in staff numbers. Consequently, backlogs of work rose at a substantial pace.
“The Caixin China General Services Business Activity Index fell to 26.5 in February, about half the reading of the previous month, marking its first drop into contractionary territory since the survey launched in November 2005. Stagnating consumption amid the coronavirus epidemic has had a great impact on the service sector.
1) Demand for services shrank sharply. Both the gauges for total new business and new export business dropped to their lowest levels on record.
2) It was difficult for service providers to recruit workers, and backlogs of work climbed. The drop in the employment gauge was relatively small, but its February reading marked the lowest point on record. The measure for outstanding orders surged to a record high. Supply capacity across the service sector was insufficient amid restrictions on the movement of people.
3) The measure for input costs dropped at a steeper rate than that for prices companies charged customers, because of a sharp decline in supply capacity.
4) Business confidence also fell to a record low. Although policies have been introduced to provide tax and financing support for industries and small businesses heavily impacted by the epidemic, service companies were still concerned about uncertainties resulting from the epidemic.
Additionally, the Composite Output Index signaled the sharpest decline in total Chinese business activity on record in February, as company closures and travel restrictions were put in place due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“The Caixin China Composite Output Index dropped to 27.5 in February from 51.9 in the previous month. While the gauges for new orders, new export orders and employment all weakened to their lowest levels on record, the gauge for backlogs of work rose to a record high. The decline in input costs was greater than that in output prices because upstream industries’ supply capacity was less affected.
“The coronavirus epidemic has obviously impacted China’s economy. It is necessary to pay attention to the divergence of business sentiment between the manufacturing and the service sectors. While recent supportive policies for manufacturing, small businesses and industries heavily affected by the epidemic have had a more obvious effect on the manufacturing sector, it is more difficult for service companies to make up their cash flow losses.“
And as China’s Composite PMI collapses, US and Japan are also in contraction with Europe – for now – somehow managing to cling to expansion…
But the funniest thing of all is the fact that Chinese stocks are dramatically outperfoming US and European since the start of the crisis…
Thanks National Team for making it all seem awesome!
A school in Brooklyn reportedly handed out stickers to 4-year-old children during a ‘drag queen story time’ event that said “drag queen in training.”
According to Twitter user @beyondreasdoubt, the stickers were handed out by the unnamed private school during a “family day” that included the appearance of drag queens.
Private school in Brooklyn had family day today with drag queen story time and they gave these out to 4 year olds pic.twitter.com/OYL5Kcb6yy
While leftists continue to deny that ‘drag queen story time’ is sexual in nature, despite the very performative nature of drag queens being similar to burlesque dancers, examples proving it is sexual continue to emerge.
As we highlighted yesterday, a video clip out of the UK showed a drag queen teaching toddlers how to twerk, a sexual dance where the participant repeatedly gyrates their butt in the air.
As we highlighted last week, many drag queens have engaged in sexually explicit behavior, including one called ‘Flowjob’ who visited a primary school in Scotland after posting pictures of himself on Twitter using a dildo and a ball gag.
A separate video that caused controversy last week also showed a drag queen dancing suggestively in front of a little girl while adults in the room cheered and applauded.
Here’s a drag queen dancing suggestively for a young girl while the adults look on and cheer
Last year during a speech in front of the Lafayette Library Board of Control in Louisiana, drag queen Dylan Pontiff candidly admitted the true purpose of drag queen story time.
“This is going to be the grooming of the next generation,” he said.
An admitted pedophile and convicted child porn peddler also wrote an article in which he describes ‘Desmond is Amazing’ – the 12-year-old drag queen kid – as “hot”.
Reacting to concerns over Desmond’s performance at a gay night club in New York where attendees threw money at the child, his mother defended the decision, telling an Australian TV show, “I don’t understand what the controversy is.”
Desmond was previously involved in ‘drag queen story time’ – in which drag queens visit schools and libraries across America to read to children.
One of the participants at a drag queen story time event in Houston, 32-year-old Albert Garza, later turned out to be a registered sex offender who was convicted of assaulting an eight-year-old boy in 2008.
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With deaths and cases soaring in Japan (now at almost 300 cases – ex Diamond Princess – and 12 deaths, though the numbers are widely questioned), Fox News reports that Hashimoto told the upper house of parliament:
“The IOC has the right to cancel the Games only if they are not held during 2020,” she
“This can be interpreted to mean the games can be postponed as long as they are held during the calendar year.”
Asked whether she believed the Games would be held if the coronavirus outbreak worsened, she replied:
“We are making the utmost effort so that we don’t have to face that situation.”
Notably, Japan’s Olympic Minister’s position is at odds with International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Dick Pound, who told AP News last Wednesday that the Games would most likely be canceled, rather than postponed if the outbreak continued to worsen in the months ahead.
Pound said there’s a three-month window to decide the fate of the Games:
“You could certainly go to two months out if you had to,” he said, which would mean the decision would come around late May.
“A lot of things have to start happening. You’ve got to start ramping up your security, your food, the Olympic Village, the hotels, the media folks will be in there building their studios.”
He noted that if the virus outbreak continued to deteriorate, then “you’re probably looking at a cancellation.”
“This is the new war, and you have to face it. In and around that time, I’d say folks are going to have to ask: ‘Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo, or not?'” he said.
He added:
“You just don’t postpone something on the size and scale of the Olympics. There are so many moving parts, so many countries and different seasons, and competitive seasons, and television seasons. You can’t just say, we’ll do it in October.”
Pound said, moving the Games to another city is highly unlikely.
“To move the place is difficult because there are few places in the world that could think of gearing up facilities in that short time to put something on,” he said.
Since 1896, the Olympics have only been canceled during wartime. And in 1976, 1980 and 1984 faced boycotts.
The longer the outbreak continues, the more uncertainty it would create for Olympic organizers. All eyes on May.
At press time, CoinATMRadar listed 7,014 cryptocurrency ATMs in existence. This number also includes machines hosting digital currencies other than Bitcoin (BTC), including assets such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), Dash (DASH) and Litecoin (LTC).
Crypto ATMs have come a long way
The world saw its first Bitcoin ATM in 2013, when a company called Robocoin placed a machine in a Vancouver coffee shop. Allowing customers to trade Bitcoin for cash, and vice versa, the machine saw $10,000 in BTC transacted on its launch day.
At present, 42 different manufacturers are responsible for the 7,000 global crypto ATMs.
Only two locations host Robocoin ATMs, CoinATMRadar data showed. Genesis Coin sits in the lead with machines in 2,348 locations.
Digital asset ATMs keep coming
The world now sees11.7 new crypto ATMs installed per day, according to CoinATMRadar’s data from the past seven days.
Last fall, Bitcoin ATM company Bitstop teamed up with massive United States-based mall operator Simon Malls, spurring the installation of five machines in five separate malls run by the operator.
Florida’s Miami International Airport also received a Bitcoin ATM from Bitstop in the latter half of 2019.
Crypto ATMs only recently surpassed the 6,000 landmark in November 2019, showing a growing public demand for cryptocurrency availability. This type of data shows digital asset adoption and presence continues waging forward, one step at a time.
Americans Will Soon See More US Military Members In Turbans, Beards & Hijabs
Americans could soon begin seeing the unusual sight of US military service members walking around in Islamic hijab and other religious garb like turbans.
This after the United States Air Force dramatically changed its dress code policy this month to allow airmen to wear religious apparel so long as it presents an overall “professional and well-groomed appearance.”
US Air Force/Army photographs
According to the newest update to the “Dress and Personal Appearance of Air Force Personnel” code, material used for religious headwear must fit the assigned uniform color, including camouflage.
Furthermore, beards will be allowed for religious reasons. Individual members must request permission for unshorn hair and facial hair, but upon exceeding two inches the regulations call for it to be “rolled and/or or tied” to meet the new standards.
US Air Force adherents to the Muslim and Sikh faiths are those most likely to take advantage of the loosening uniform changes — the latter which are now also authorized to wear under-turbans or patkas even in indoor areas (where headwear is typically removed).
Image via ACLU
But a couple of military members identifying with “Norse Heathen faiths” have already stepped up to claim a religious exemption for their beards, as The Air Force Times explains:
Airman 1st Class Harpreetinder Singh Bajwa in June 2019 became the first active-duty Sikh airman allowed to wear a turban, beard and long hair, which Sikhs tie in a bun and then cover with the turban.
And at least two airmen who follow the Norse Heathen, or pagan, faiths have been granted permission to wear a beard.
The new uniform regulations note, however, that the individual’s chain of command can order the removal of religious headgear in various circumstances if it “furthers a compelling governmental interest.”
Image via ACLU/FOX News
One example would be for exercises involving the necessity of donning a chemical/biological gas mask, which must fit snuggly over the head.
For years the US armed services resisted such religious accommodation, emphasizing standard “clean cut” uniformity and appearance across the board — but various “religious freedom” lawsuits were recently brought by the ACLU, which began to drive limited policy changes.
