Month: May 2020

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Scott Adams has a perfect phrase to describe our political divide.

“One screen, two movies.”

What he means is that two people see the same event and process it in completely opposite ways, depending on their perspective.

That perspective is made up of a whole host of things – current state of mind, personal experience, personality traits, body chemistry, etc.

Take that one step further and incorporate human survival traits like in-group/out-group bias and the potential for self-reinforcing feedback loops of anxiety to explode into unbridgeable divisions within society become very likely.

None of what I just described is novel. It shouldn’t even need to be explained at this point. But, we’re living in such a state of heightened anxiety it is easy to lose sight of the basics.

I’ve been writing this blog now for more than three years. I have to remind myself of things I wrote previously that I’ve forgotten about in the day-to-day grind chronicling the devolution of our society into madness.

Because all of us, including me, are exhibiting signs of real madness when confronted with the monstrous events we perceive playing out on our movie screens.

There is an information war occurring that is aimed at creating hair trigger reactions to events to advance particular political agendas. It doesn’t matter what the issue of the day is. Today it’s the burning down of Minneapolis over police brutality.

The footage of George Floyd being murdered is enough to trigger most any decent person into a near-murderous rage.

And, as Scott pointed out in his commentary on this, no one is arguing the murder of George Floyd was anything other than just that, murder. Whites, blacks, browns, men, womyn, cis, xe, he, vegan, capitalist.

So, why is this a race issue? Why are our media and our political class cheering on the destruction of a U.S. city and fanning the flames higher, excusing the destruction to promote a false race war?

Because that’s what they want to see and get a critical mass of people to also see it that way.

We’re all outraged by underlying incident. There aren’t two movies here.

Unfortunately, the way we express this outrage is based on where we are at the moment we view it.

If we are in deep state of anxiety, where the left-brain has suppressed the right because survival instincts kick in, then we default to the easiest, quickest explanation. For those on the left, fed a toxic mix of identity politics and Communism, police brutality is the perfect metaphor for systemic racism and cultural division.

Paralyze the police and undermine the fabric of the society. But it isn’t like the police haven’t been a growing problem in this country for decades.

Since the Clinton Crime Bill of the 1990’s cops have been consistently militarized to the point of inhumanity.

Police officers today look nothing like my dad as NYPD in the 1970’s when societal unrest there was as bad if not worse then what’s happening in Minneapolis today.

And I remember watching the Rodney King riots in LA with him and he saying then the problem in policing is the men have no life experience, no skin yet in the game, i.e. family.

His generation of police are gone. Even the ones that came behind him are leaving the scene (dad would have been 92 this year). My dad didn’t live to see the Clinton Crime Bill but he would have been against it.

Because with the subsequent wars and the federal money their loyalty was politicized, the degradation of their relationship to their community eroded to where it is now. Do you seek out police interactions today or fear them?

What movie is playing in your head? Because I know which one is playing in mine. Hence, you know, Gold Goats ‘n Guns.

Both of these trends have accelerated as we grind through this Fourth Turning. Endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have police forces, already militarized, staffed with guys who have combat experience, that see the job through that lens. Screening for mental instability is faulty at best so mistakes are going to happen.

Tyranny is guaranteed alongside the corruption and the need for all men to regain a lost sense of potency in a world sinking into depravity.

And those jobs need to be filled especially as the wealth is drained from the lower and middle classes through ruinous taxation, regulation and endless money printing.

But, we’re supposed to be divided along race lines because of a white cop choking out a black man? And this is an excuse to burn down a city and instigate riots all over the country?

There isn’t any connection between these things and reality. Everyone is being played for a chump here.

Cops and protesters banging heads while bankers sit at home drinking wine with their newly printed Federal Reserve dollars. Same as it ever was.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 30, 2020

The sad truth is, as President Trump pointed out and Twitter censored, George Floyd is irrelevant now. This has taken on a life of its own. It’s about chaos and much larger issues than the incident which spawned it.

What’s happening in Minnesota was a coordinated attack.

Who is setting up pallets of bricks around the country for rioting? This is too organized. WTH? I bet people paid to do so show up first and get the party started.

pic.twitter.com/iwwSpbNLud

— ᗰᵉˡ 🌷 (@mel_faith1) May 30, 2020

What’s your reaction to this screen? What movie are you seeing here?

My movie says this is the next stage of the operation to oust Trump from power. The Coronapocalypse movie is mostly over but it’s had its intended effect of dividing us even further.

Now Antifa-style mask-wearing has been thoroughly normalized. Now the person in the CVS standing next to you can be a threat to your community.

Too paranoid a movie for you?

I’m sorry but image systems matter. That’s the whole point of putting movies on the screen in the first place.

Jack Dorsey and Twitter are daring Trump to regulate or shut down the platform with their censoring his tweets. CNN and MSNBC know their sit-down ratings are abysmal. Their real ratings exist on social media.

In that sense they are no more legitimate news than people with iPhones posting thoughts on Instagram and Twitter.

The movie they are selling is Trump is to blame regardless of what happens, just like in Charlottesville. If he brings in the National Guard to mow down black people in the streets and get any number of Twitter Moments to further confuse what you’re watching.

If Trump does nothing he loses Conservatives who believe in law and order, fairness and all of that. If he over-commits he’s got Kent State times ten on his hands.

While my movie says this is definitely an operation designed to inflict maximal political damage on Trump the sub-text of my movie screams about what is truly wrong with America.

That this is a power struggle for the next century by evil people manipulating desperate and cynical ones into acts of violence and hatred which is falsely directed by a script pre-written to keep us angry, fearful and divided.

And until we all back away from the screens and see that script for what it is, this will escalate until a lot more than just Minneapolis is burning.

*  *  *

Join My Patreon if you want help seeing the scripts behind the movies. Install the Brave Browser if you want to starve Google from making bad movies.

It’s a shame that we’re all likely going to be social distancing this Christmas, otherwise certain investment banks sound like they could be setting up for one hell of a holiday party.

In fact, a party that’s three times as better as its been in recent years. 

That’s because the U.S. is deploying “an elite group of military trainers” to Colombia to help the country’s counter-narcotics offensive deal with raging cocaine production in the country. Production of cocaine has “more than tripled” within the last few years, according to Bloomberg. 

The U.S. has assisted Colombian forces for years, but this marks the first time the U.S. has sent members of its Security Force Assistance Brigade. The troops will be in Colombia to provide training and won’t take part in combat. The deployment is also an attempt to put pressure on Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. 

In another move many thought was to put pressure on Maduro, President Trump had said back in April that he was adding a naval presence in the Caribbean to help fight the drug cartels. 

Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America said: “The intended audience for this training deployment is probably in Caracas.”

Meanwhile, the increased amount of cocaine output coming out of Colombia has led the President to cut the country off from certain support, aid and loans. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, potential cocaine production fell 1.4% last year, but only after reaching a record of 900 tons in 2017.  

U.S. Southern Command said: “In Colombia, the team will work with host units in areas designated by the Colombian government as ‘priority areas’ where they will focus on logistics, services and intelligence capabilities.”

The deployment is expected to last about four months and will be specific to drug producing regions.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Looting and arson have followed what began as peaceful protests in response to the apparent killing of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a now-former member of the Minneapolis Police Department.

But whatever was the spark that set off the current round of rioting in the Twin Cities area, it is clear that most property owners and residents will have to fend for themselves where riots have taken place. In other words, any unfortunate shopkeeper or resident who finds himself in the path of the rioters ought to just assume that police won’t be around to provide any protection from the mob.

For example, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:

The police station on E. Lake Street has been the epicenter of protests this week… Nearby, Minnehaha Lake Wine & Spirits, the target of looters the night before, also was set ablaze. …On Wednesday night, a man was fatally shot and crowds looted and burned buildings on E. Lake Street late into the night.

Earlier in the day, in St. Paul, looters broke windows, stormed through battered-down doors and snatched clothes, phones, shoes and other merchandise from shops along University Avenue near the intersection of Pascal Street. Officers formed a barricade in front of Target. But police were absent a block away at T.J. Maxx, where looters smashed down the door and fled with heaps of clothing piled on shopping carts.

Many business owners who now face destruction at the hands of rioters can scarcely afford it:

Many of the shops destroyed along this stretch of E. Lake Street are immigrant-owned businesses — many of which were already struggling during the coronavirus pandemic. “Now it’s worse,” said Roberto Hernandez, who stood guard outside his nutrition store for five hours to fend off looters. (emphasis added)

Another man, who was working to open a sports bar in the area later this year, saw his bar destroyed. Needless to say, with only a few exceptions, the police weren’t around to “protect and serve.”

Admittedly, in cases like this week’s riots, the police are heavily outnumbered and unable to provide any sort of general protection from rioters. Even if individual officers were engaging in heroic behavior to turn rioters away from potential victims, there would be little they could do to confront all offenders.

But heroics or not, the outcome for victims is the same: they must rely on self defense, formal private security, or private armed volunteers likely to be labeled as “vigilantes.”

A failure to protect taxpaying citizens from violence and crime in a wide variety of situations is standard operating procedure for police departments which are under no legal obligation to protect anyone, and where “officer safety” is the number-one priority. The lesson to be learned here is that the alleged “social contract” between citizens and the state is a one-way street: you pay taxes for police “services,” and the police may or may not give you anything in return.

Police Are Not Obligated to Provide Protection

It is now a well-established legal principle in the United States that police officers and police departments are not legally responsible to refusing to intervene in cases where private citizens are in imminent danger or even in the process of being victimized.

The US Supreme Court has made it clear that law enforcement agencies are not required to provide protection to the citizens who are forced to pay for police services, year in and year out.

In cases of civil unrest, of course, be prepared to receive approximately nothing from police in terms of protecting property, or life and limb.

During the 2014 riots that followed the police killing of Michael Brown, for example, shopkeepers were forced to hire private security, and many had to rely on armed volunteers for protection from looters. “There’s no police,” one Ferguson shopkeeper told FoxNews at the time. “We trusted the police to keep it peaceful; they didn’t do their job.”

More famously, shopkeepers during the Los Angeles riots defended their shops with private firearms:

“Where are the police? Where are the police?” [shopkeeper Chang] Lee whispered over and over from his rooftop perch. Lee would not see law enforcement for three days — only fellow Korean-Americans, who would be photographed by news agencies looking like armed militia…

Officer Safety Comes First

During the Columbine school shootings in Colorado in 1999, the Sheriff department’s “first responders” formed a perimeter outside the building and refused to enter because the situation was deemed too risky for law enforcement. Meanwhile, children were being slaughtered inside.

Nearly twenty years later, law enforcement officers at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida cowered behind vehicles while students were murdered inside the school.

But even in cases where police are willing to enter the premises and attempt to subdue violent criminals, the victim may find law enforcement officers to be of little help. According to 2008 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, police response times to violent-crime-related calls exceeded 11 minutes one-third of the time. Things were no better twelve years earlier in 1996, when a similar survey was conducted. Now, twelve years after 2008, there’s no reason to assume anything has improved.

11 minutes is a long time to wait when dealing with a violent criminal.

Moreover, when police do arrive, don’t expect a competent response. The cases of Atatania Jefferson and Botham Jean provide some helpful reminders.

According to multiple accounts of the Jefferson case, a neighbor of Jefferson called police to “check up” on Jefferson whom the neighbor feared Jefferson might be in danger. Jefferson was soon shot dead in her own living room by law enforcement. The shooter — a now-former cop named Aaron Dean — entered Jefferson’s private property unannounced in the middle of the night. He peered into Jefferson’s windows, and within seconds, the officer had shot Jefferson dead. Jefferson had been playing video games with her nephew.

A year earlier, former police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to ten years in prison for unlawfully shooting Botham Jean in his own apartment. At the time, Guyger was a police officer returning home from work. She illegally entered the wrong apartment and promptly shot Jean — the unit’s lawful resident — dead.

And, of course, there is the case of Justine Damond, who called the Minneapolis Police Department to report a possible sexual assault near her home. When police arrived, they shot Damond dead, for no known reason other than hysterical fear on the part of police.

Those who proactively attempt to defend themselves fare little better. In 2018, Colorado resident Richard Black used a firearm to defend his grandson against an intruder. Unfortunately, someone called the police. When officers arrived, they opened fire on Black, even though was only a threat to the criminal intruder. 

The lesson to be learned from all this is that it is foolhardy, to say the least, to rely on law enforcement officers to intervene to provide “safety” when troubles arise.

After all, experience has shown police are thoroughly unmotivated when it comes to preventing, or even investigating true violent crime. Confronting violent criminals is dangerous and costly. Thus, police departments are geared much more around encouraging harassment of petty offenders (such as George Floyd) and going after small-time drug offenders while confiscating property under asset forfeiture laws.

This provides revenue to pad agency budgets while prioritizing the targeting of easy marks, rather than violent offenders. In the United States, more than half of serious crimes are never solved.

And yet, though it all, we hear again and again the myth that law enforcement agencies will provide protection, retrieve stolen property, and keep the peace. Many people in Minneapolis are now experiencing the reality.

Over the last few months we detailed how used car prices were set to cripple what little interest in new cars remains, how dealers are scrambling to desperately offer incentives and how ships full of vehicles are being turned away at port cities due to a lack of space and inventory glut.

Today, it’s looking like the market is seeing a much needed respite, even though it may be temporary.

Used car prices are bouncing back from last month’s low and approaching forecasts that were made prior to the pandemic. In fact, J.D. Power’s weekly wholesale auction price index is now only down 1.9% from where it was expected prior to the virus.

Car auctions around the country were shutting down last month and many in the industry had warned about the potential for prices to collapse as a result, according to Bloomberg. We had pointed out worries about used car pricing weeks ago, noting the pressure that a drop in pricing could put on manufacturers and rental car companies.

In fact, since then, Hertz filed for bankruptcy, while desperately trying to unload some of its rental car inventory.

As we reported previously, earlier last week Hertz dumped a bunch of Corvette Z06s on to the used car market in what experts said was a great deal for buyers. And more used car deals are starting to roll out on Hertz’s website after the company’s bankruptcy filing announcement. As caught by Jalopnik, here’s a 2020 BMW 740i for $52,949 and only 8,595 miles on the odometer, more than $10K below Blue Book value for cars in the same area.

We also pointed out how GM, Ford and others were set to lose billions as a result of a crash in used car prices. Mid-month April data from Manheim showed that the used vehicle value index had fallen 11.8% for the first 15 days of April, a decline on a record setting pace, according to Bloomberg. 

 

Auto companies had only been expecting a 5% to 7% drop in used car prices. We also reported weeks ago that GM was only bracing for a 4% drop in prices and that a further drop could put extreme financial stress on the company.

For example, Joel Levington, a credit analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence said last month: “GM assumed a 4% decline in residual values this year. If the 10% drop Manheim has seen recently persists, depreciation expense could counter the $1.9 billion that GM Financial earned in pretax profit last year.”

Whether or not the respite in prices is temporary and permanent likely depends on how long the country can stay open again. With more legs in showrooms and business as usual at used car auctions, the market may continue to see a bid (albeit a stressed one, due to the financial shape of the U.S. consumer). 

However, if the virus begins to spread again and the country is again placed on lockdown, automakers and used car sellers could be heading for Round 2 of the very same hellish scenario they first experienced in April. 

Via ProPublica.org,

The Trump administration has promised at least $1.8 billion to 345 first-time contractors, often without competitive bidding or thorough vetting of their backgrounds.

A firm set up by a former telemarketer who once settled federal fraud charges for $2.7 million. A vodka distributor accused in a pending lawsuit of overstating its projected sales. An aspiring weapons dealer operating out of a single-family home.

These three privately held companies are part of the new medical supply chain, offered a total of almost $74 million by the federal government to find and rapidly deliver vital protective equipment and COVID-19 testing supplies across the U.S. While there’s no evidence that they obtained their deals through political connections, none of the three had to bid against competing firms. One has already lost its contract for lack of performance; it’s unclear if the other two can fulfill their orders on time, or at all.

They are among about 345 first-time federal contractors promised at least $1.8 billion in deals by the Trump administration since March, representing about 13% of total government spending on pandemic-related contracts of $13.8 billion, a ProPublica analysis of federal procurement data found. Like the three companies, many of the new contractors have no experience acquiring medical products.

Some of them, including the ex-telemarketer’s company and another firm established by a former White House aide, formed only days or weeks before landing multimillion-dollar government contracts. The U.S. government’s reliance on them, with what appears to be scant vetting of their credentials, represents a major gamble whose outcome could affect how many Americans are infected by the coronavirus and how quickly the U.S. economy recovers.

“We’re putting schedule above quality, to some extent, in this time of great need,” said Trevor Brown, a professor of public management at Ohio State University. “There’s just so much pressure to get PPE into the field, I’m not surprised there’s a relaxing of focus on the quality of the product.”

Track Federal Government Coronavirus Contracts

Coronavirus Contracts: Tracking Federal Purchases to Fight the Pandemic

The federal government is spending billions of dollars to combat the coronavirus, and spending shows no sign of slowing down. Explore who the U.S. is buying from, what it’s buying and how much it’s paying.

The U.S. health care system and federal agencies were woefully unprepared for the pandemic. As novel coronavirus infections surged in March, hospitals quickly ran short of N95 respirator masks, gowns and other protective gear for front-line workers. The National Strategic Stockpile became depleted within weeks, and every level of government has struggled to restock.

Scrambling to cope with an unprecedented public health crisis, several federal agencies limited their vetting process to checking that companies and their owners were not officially barred from receiving government contracts. The agencies also have bypassed competitive bidding on many purchases, as is allowed under federal law when there is an “unusual and compelling urgency.”

This strategy appears to have boosted less established firms; ProPublica’s analysis found that 51% of the deals with first-time contractors were without competition, compared with 32% of pandemic-related contracts overall. For example, at the White House’s directive, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded more than $60 million in contracts for test swabs and sample containers to be distributed to states and Native American tribes — all without competitive bidding.

The large-scale reliance on no-bid contracts is worrisome because it increases the risks of price gouging, fraud and faulty products, said Steve Kelman, a former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

“Even if you’re allowed to do that, even if you need to act quickly, I would not just go to one company and say, ‘Sell it to us,’” said Kelman, now a Harvard University professor of public administration.

Agencies often award the deals without proof that the desired inventory exists. Payment is contingent on performance; if a vendor doesn’t deliver, the government walks away. Under the terms of their deals, companies may even be required to pay the difference if they fail to provide supplies and the government has to use a more expensive contractor. With the coronavirus continuing to sicken tens of thousands of people daily and keeping tens of millions out of work, the most important costs may be in time lost, increased cases and economic stagnation, if delays in getting supplies where they’re needed lead to more infections and prolonged quarantines.

On April 20, the Department of Veterans Affairs granted a $14.5 million contract for N95 masks to Bayhill Defense, which formed in 2017 and lists a house in Pittsburgh in government filings. (The firm also has warehouse space in a Pittsburgh suburb, according to its website.) The company, which has a federal firearm license, says on its website that it sells “defense industry products,” including ammunition, assault rifles, grenade launchers, rocket systems, mortars and anti-aircraft guns, “to be provided to the United States and other friendly nations.” It has never received a contract from the Department of Defense, according to federal procurement data.

Bayhill Defense agreed to provide the masks in 10 days, but it never delivered any, and the VA canceled the contract this month without paying the company. Reached by phone, Andrew Taglianetti, the company’s president, declined to explain how Bayhill Defense secured the deal or why it failed.

“It’s all good,” Taglianetti said.

During crisis and war, the federal government has often turned to new contractors selling specialty products or promising to deliver quickly. While these arrangements can be beneficial for agencies and vendors, they also have a troubled history.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, fighting lasted years longer than the Pentagon had planned. It needed food and other basic supplies faster than its existing contractors could provide, said Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and expert on government purchasing. Military officials hired businesses in the region, particularly Kuwaiti trading companies. The deals were rife with corruption and several ended in criminal prosecutions, Tiefer said.

Similarly, when Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the Gulf Coast, fraud and waste in procurement plagued the federal response, Tiefer said. “Government contracting is at its worst when it doesn’t have time and it has to take on an emergency.”

The owner of one first-time contractor examined by ProPublica, Fillakit LLC, has repeatedly faced fraud allegations. Beginning on May 7, FEMA gave three deals totaling $10.5 million to Fillakit, which had incorporated in Florida just seven days before, according to government records. Under the terms of the contracts, Fillakit is supposed to supply FEMA with swabs as well as containers for uncontaminated samples.

Fillakit’s incorporation documents list an address in a business park north of Houston, and a St. Petersburg, Florida, lawyer as its agent. They provide no information about the company’s ownership.

However, the cellphone number for Fillakit in the federal contract data belongs to Paul Wexler, a businessman repeatedly accused of fraudulent practices over the past two decades. Wexler’s background is primarily in law and real estate, not medical supplies.

In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission accused Wexler and his telemarketing firm of illegal robocalling, making unauthorized charges to consumers’ bank accounts and falsely claiming to be a nonprofit organization. Wexler’s firm allegedly misrepresented itself as a credit counseling service for several years, charging customers for work it did not do, according to court records.

Wexler denied the charges but settled the case a year later. The settlement banned him from offering debt relief services — but not from being a federal contractor — and imposed a $2.7 million judgment.

Wexler confirmed to ProPublica that he owns Fillakit, but he declined to answer other questions about the company or his background. “I’d love to help you, I can’t right now,” he said. “We’re doing so much right now, the volume that we’re doing, I’ve got hundreds of people and I just don’t have time to do this.”

Wexler said Fillakit is preparing to send the swabs and containers to FEMA. “We’re just pumping them out as fast as we can for them, so I’ve really got to stay on point here,” he said.

In a written statement last Friday, FEMA said it has paid Fillakit $381,000 for one delivery of swabs and containers. The company has less than six weeks to provide the remaining $10.1 million worth of test supplies.

Before telemarketing, Wexler was a lawyer and real estate developer building custom homes in Colorado. He declared bankruptcy in 2003. Afterward, court records show, several banks and business associates accused him of financial misconduct.

Geoffrey Phillips loaned Wexler’s development company $75,000 in 2002. It used a home as collateral for the loan, but the property actually belonged to Wexler and his wife, according to court records. Wexler’s company didn’t repay the debt, and Wexler listed the home as his personal residence in his bankruptcy filing, protecting it from seizure. Phillips sued, accusing Wexler of fraud. Phillips won the lawsuit and the bankruptcy judge removed the home from protection.

In an interview, Phillips said he was baffled that FEMA would approve Wexler’s deal. “Don’t you think the government would check him thoroughly before they gave him a contract?” Phillips said. “Unbelievable.”

Under federal procurement law, only the history of Wexler’s company is relevant, not his personal track record, said Brown, the Ohio State professor. “The contract officer can’t go back and use the information on his prior behavior for another company as evidence in decision-making.”

FEMA said that it did not evaluate Wexler’s past business practices, only those of his fledgling company. “FEMA reviewed Fillakit’s quote and their contractor assurance statement. Nothing was found that would render this company ineligible for award,” the agency said.

In addition to newly formed companies, well-established firms in other industries have moved into medical supplies and secured their first government contracts without competition.

The VA gave a $14.7 million contract for masks to Aunt Flow, an Ohio-based seller of tampons and other menstrual products for dispensers in women’s bathrooms. When orders for its products slowed during the pandemic, the company converted its own manufacturing facilities in China to produce surgical masks, and it began selling them to existing clients as well as federal agencies. Then, it tried to capitalize on its manufacturing relationships in China to bring in a shipment of the heavier-duty N95 masks for veterans hospitals.

But as the supplies were being loaded on a plane, the Chinese government ordered all of the manufacturer’s masks diverted for domestic use, said Claire Coder, the company’s CEO. She said she immediately called the VA to inform it that the company couldn’t fulfill the deal, and the money was never paid.

Medea Inc., a California-based liquor company, also got a federal contract to supply surgical masks. This month, FEMA awarded a $48.8 million deal to Medea, which is a boutique vodka brand best known for decorating its bottles with colorful LED displays. Its marketing videos feature former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal.

A New Jersey finance firm is suing Medea in federal court, alleging it committed fraud during sales negotiations by falsely claiming Costco and Kroger had agreed to stock the brand nationwide. Medea has denied the allegations in court filings. A pending lawsuit is not normally grounds to deny a federal contract.

Medea has high-level political ties in California. Terry McGann, a member of Medea’s board and its former chief executive, is a former registered state lobbyist. McGann’s wife, Marie Moretti, led a state agency that coordinated volunteer efforts across California before working as Medea’s first chief financial officer. She’s now its chief marketing officer. McGann said political influence did not help the liquor distributor secure the contract, and he referred all other questions to the company. Medea executives, including Moretti, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

FEMA did not answer a question about whether Medea has begun delivering masks, which are due by June 1. Asked about the company’s qualifications, a FEMA spokesperson wrote that the liquor company was chosen “based on meeting the evaluation factors for award specified in the solicitation.”

A week ago we took note of the results of a Reuters/Ipsos survey which found 25% of Americans have no interest in taking a coronavirus vaccine. Those prior findings also confirmed a trend that the majority of Americans said they would need to review additional research on the vaccine to determine if it was safe, suggesting the majority would stay home as opposed to health officials’ hoped-for expectation the majority would inundate local clinics to gain ‘immunity’ via a new inoculation. 

This as President Trump’s much touted but perhaps dubious Operation Warp Speed program has the ambitious aim of producing 300 million doses of a vaccine by January, a goal that we and others have pointed out is widely unrealistic. Naturally most Americans might have intense doubts and anxiety over injecting a substance into their bodies which was “rushed” or fast-tracked to market, obviously without the normative lengthy research and trial process. 

A new Associated Press poll out this week confirms the public skepticism. It found that only 49% of 1,056 Americans surveyed would intend to get the vaccine.

On the other side 20% said they would noted get inoculated at all and another 31% are unsure. The survey was conduced in the middle of this month.

The AP described the number of those apparently planning to reject a vaccine is “surprisingly low considering the effort going into the global race” for the key preventative measure. 

“The unexpected looms large and that’s why I think for any of these vaccines, we’re going to need a large safety database to provide the reassurance,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told AP.

Americans interviewed in association with the new poll precisely echoed concerns over safety given the speed at which it would be rolled out:

Among Americans who say they wouldn’t get vaccinated, 7 in 10 worry about safety.

“I am not an anti-vaxxer,” said Melanie Dries, 56, of Colorado Springs, Colorado. But, “to get a COVID-19 vaccine within a year or two … causes me to fear that it won’t be widely tested as to side effects.”

Interestingly, the results are parallel to the numbers of people who said they planned to get a seasonal flu shot (52% according to a 2019 National Foundation for Infectious Diseases poll).

* * *

Here’s a quick breakdown of the latest AP poll numbers: 

• 67% percent of those over 60 plan to get the vaccine 
• 40% of those under 60 would
• 56% of whites say they’ll get the vaccine 
• Only 25% of blacks and 37% of Hispanics say they’ll get it 
• 62% of Democrats say they will get it 
• Only 43% of Republicans say they plan to

Authored by Eduardo Neret via Campus Reform,

Fake transcripts and essays, falsified letters of recommendation and test scores, paid consultants, and fake passports and IDs. These are just some of the many methods that Chinese nationals have reportedly used to gain acceptance into U.S. colleges and universities.

What once might have been a few isolated incidents has now turned into a vast, international money-making industry.

Hiu Kit David Chong, an admissions official at the University of Southern California (USC), pleaded guilty in April to wire fraud in and helping Chinese students defraud their college applications. According to the Department of Justice, Chong admitted to making $40,000 from clients over the years by providing “false college transcripts with inflated grades,” “fraudulent personal statements,” and “phony letters of recommendation” for the applications of his Chinese clients. 

He also offered to provide surrogate test takers for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam for international students.

Chong was not the only person offering such services. In fact, according to a 2012 report by Time Magazine, a “huge industry of education agents” has emerged to appeal to the increasing number of Chinese nationals who want to study abroad at U.S. universities.

Zinch China, a consultancy firm, found that 80 percent of Chinese students use agents to apply to U.S. colleges, with even more engaging in cheating. The company approximated that 90 percent of recommendation letters and 70 percent of college essays submitted by Chinese students are fraudulent. Additionally, 50 percent of previous grade transcripts are also fake. Ten percent lied about academic or extracurricular achievements, and 30 percent lied about financial aid information.

Surveys indicate Chinese families see a U.S. education as a luxury that can provide future financial benefits, which drives the “whatever it takes” culture surrounding the application process and the fraud committed to achieve it. Zinch China also noted the competition among college consultants and the pressure from parents also contributed to cheating.

“Cheating is pervasive in China, driven by hyper-competitive parents and aggressive agents,” Tom Melcher, the chairman of Zinch China said.

While Chinese students have existed in the U.S. for decades, there has been increased growth over the last ten years. According to the Power of International Education, the number of Chinese foreign students in the U.S. as of 2019 was 369,548, which was more than the next three nations, India, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, combined. Chinese students represent approximately one-third of all international students, and their presence has grown by 56.68 percent since the 2012-2013 academic year.

Peggy Blumenthal, senior counselor to the president of the Institute of International Education, says colleges began to more heavily recruit Chinese international students after the Great Recession when college enrollment was on the decline. Agents can cost anywhere from thousands of dollars, or even up to $40,000 according to the Beijing Overseas Study Service Association. Foreign Policy even discovered a family that paid $90,000 to an agent.

In one example from 2015, CNN reported on a Chinese student named Jessica Zhang from Jiangsu Province. Zhang’s family paid $4,500 to three different consultants, who filled out her application and wrote her essay and recommendation letter. Zhang even had her visa arranged by the consultants and said she hired them because the process would’ve been “too much hassle” on her own.

The international college consultant business is only worsened by the commissions that agents receive from U.S. colleges and universities for enrolling students. While federal laws prevent higher education institutions from paying to recruit domestic students, there is no law to prevent them from paying commissions to recruit international students.

Some companies even help students cheat on the SAT. Because of security issues with the College Board over the last few years, which owns the SAT, some overseas companies have obtained the answer keys to the test.

According to Reuters, since 2014, the College Board has delayed the release of scores from Asia six times and canceled exams two separate times—all because exam material had been made available. Surprisingly, the College Board later restricted testing and increased security in other Asian countries like South Korea, where some test leaks occurred, but took no such action in China.

One such student who received an answer key from his Shanghai-based tutoring company bragged about getting a perfect score on one section of the SAT, since he knew the answers to approximately half of the questions in advance.

“The reality is for international students, particularly in Asia, there’s a worry about whether the application is authentic, whether the essay is authentic, whether the person who shows up at your door is the same person who applied,” Joyce E. Smith, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling told Reuters.

Unfortunately for U.S. colleges and universities, which have struggled to monitor and identify the fraud, reports seem to suggest that cheating only continues once many of these students are on campus or in the U.S.

Schools like the University of Arizona, Ohio State University, and the University of Iowa have experienced cheating scandals involving Chinese students. An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found that records of cheating for international students at more than a “dozen large” U.S. public universities were five times greater than that of American students. At some universities, the reported cases of cheating among international students were eight times higher than domestic students.

In one egregious example, the University of Iowa estimated in 2016 that dozens of their Chinese students enrolled in a service that Reuters reported would complete a lot of the work needed to obtain a university degree, including completing assignments and taking exams.

According to three Chinese suspects who spoke to the outlet, the companies that helped the students cheat were Chinese-run.

Reuters also uncovered similar Chinese cheating services offered to students at Penn State University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Washington. The companies also offered a money-back guarantee to students who did not get As in their classes.

The “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal in 2019 even involved cases of cheating and visa fraud. The federal government arrested Liu Cai, a Chinese student who attended UCLA, and four other California residents of Chinese descent for using fake passports to impersonate Chinese nationals to take the TOEFL exam, which is required to obtain a student visa.

Some professors have tried to address the cases of academic dishonesty and lack of effort in the classroom, but have faced challenges in doing so.

At UC-Santa Barbara, art professor Kip Fulbeck, who himself is of Chinese descent, faced backlash in 2018 after writing a set of class expectations in Chinese for the Chinese international students. According to the L.A. Times, Fulbeck became frustrated with students sleeping or being distracted by their phones in class, as well as those who left the class and did not come back. Fulbeck began to realize that a significant number of students engaging in such behavior were Chinese international students.

Fulbeck later met with UC Santa Barbara’s Vice-Chancellor and some aggrieved students, but ultimately blamed the school for failing to deal with the increasing number of Chinese students and educating them on American classroom and education standards. He was also not the only professor aware of the rampant cheating among Chinese students.

Paul Spickard, a history professor at UC-Santa Barbara and member of the faculty admissions committee, told the L.A. Times that at a meeting, faculty were told that Chinese students account for one-third of all plagiarism cases on campus, despite only comprising 6 percent of the entire student population. Spickard caught one Chinese student’s plagiarism after the student used old British English colloquialisms and citations that were over 50 years old.

Richard Ross, another art professor at the university, told the L.A. Times that he even resigned over the growing cheating problem.

“My role turned from educator to enforcer, and I didn’t want to do it anymore,” Ross said.

Late last week the Trump administration raised eyebrows among the American public and around the world when it was revealed it is actually considering conducting a nuclear test for the first time in 28 years, ultimately as a ‘message’ to Russia and China. It was discussed two weeks ago (May 15) at a “deputies meeting” of senior national security officials at the White House.

Though apparently shelved for the time being a senior official told The Washington Post the idea of a US test is “very much an ongoing conversation.” But assuming the administration is actually ready to pull the trigger on such a test, how long would it take to get to the point of conducting the nuclear blast from the time the order is given? 

A Pentagon official told Defense Daily this week that it would take only a matter of months to ready a nuclear-explosive test, even though the last one was all the way back in 1992, upon the end of the Cold War. Though the official noted such a rapid rollout would include “minimal diagnostics”. 

Likely any potential future US nuclear test would take place at highly secure national testing grounds in Nevada: 

Previous heads of the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have talked “about a very quick test with limited diagnostics, though certainly diagnostics, within months,” said Drew Walter, who is performing the duties of deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters. “A fuller test, fully diagnostic, and lots of data, all the bells and whistles, so to speak, might be measured in years. But ultimately, if the President directed because of a technical issue or a geopolitical issue, a system to go test, I think it would happen relatively rapidly.”

Walter also said that he believes the NNSA has a borehole at the Nevada National Security Site that would be suitable for such a rapid test.

In terms of any hot geopolitical issues which might provide impetus for “rapid” pursuit of a new test, recall Washington has of late charged both Russia and China with ‘illegally’ conducting low-yield nuclear tests, which both countries have denied.

Oh great – they’ve already got a spot picked out for a nuclear test. Make no mistake, the Trump administration could absolutely do this https://t.co/lmHWSGIWKR

— John Carl Baker (@johncarlbaker) May 27, 2020

In Beijing’s case it’s believed China’s military is able to conceal such provocative tests at an elaborate underground testing facility, though Chinese officials have vehemently denied this.

Currently the Nevada National Security Site is undergoing a major upgrade to its underground complex where it’s believed future American nuke tests would be conducted. 

Meanwhile, it remains that one of the biggest geo-strategic obstacles to the US conducting a test is that analysts believe it would free up Russia and China to conduct their own tests, given if Washington abandoned its strictly observed nuclear test moratorium, others would have reason and justification to follow suit in abandoning prohibitions and international obligations. 

* * *

Submitted by Jessica Rabe of DataTrek Research

“Contacts cited challenges in bringing employees back to work, including… generous unemployment insurance benefits.” That’s the topic getting the most attention from the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book out Wednesday. There’s more to the story, however:

• As we noted yesterday in our review of the report, the extra $600/week unemployment insurance stimulus ends on July 31st, so that should help employers persuade workers to get back on payroll.

• Business owners who received a PPP loan must eventually offer to rehire those they laid off. If a worker rejects the offer, the employer must often report the employee to the state unemployment office thus making the worker ineligible to keep receiving unemployment insurance benefits.

• The PPP loan only covers up to eight weeks of wages, rent and other expenses. Given that business shutdowns started in mid-March, the window for many businesses to ask workers if they want their job back is narrowing.

In the end, however, the most important driver of whether furloughed workers quickly return to their jobs may come down to competition in the labor force. Let’s not forget that US unemployment is +/- 20% right now, and not everyone is collecting enhanced UI. Far from it, in fact. Employers can reasonably expect to have many job applicants in the coming months.

That leverage only works if there are people searching for work right now, so we looked at Google search volumes for a variety of COVID Crisis-affected service sector jobs to see if that was the case:

#1: A comparison of Google searches for “retail job”, “restaurant job”, “hotel job” and “bar job” over the last year.

Our take:

• Searches collapsed in mid-March as businesses in the retail and leisure and hospitality sectors closed. Interest has picked up to about half of normal levels over the last month as more US states reopen their economies.

• The top three states searching for each query: “retail job”: Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas. “Restaurant job”: New Hampshire, Utah, Rhode Island. “Bar job”: Wisconsin, Missouri, Pennsylvania. “Hotel job”: Hawaii, Iowa, Oklahoma.

• Most of those states have started reopening their economies, some even already allowing dine-in or outdoor dining at restaurants over the course of May. The two exceptions: Pennsylvania will allow outdoor dining statewide soon on June 5th, while restaurants in Hawaii can reopen on June 1st.

Bottom line: demand for service sector jobs is increasing right now, so currently furloughed/laid off workers face potential competition from others who would take a job today. If called to return to work, they will have to consider the very real possibility that if they decline or try to defer their job will not be there later. Also consider that tens of thousands of retail/leisure/hospitality workers are unemployed and may not have unemployment insurance; this will only increase demand for service sector jobs in the months to come.

#2: A comparison of Google searches for “Walmart job”, “Amazon job” and “Essential job” over the last year.

Our take:

• Searches for “Walmart/Amazon/essential job” all spiked in mid-March when businesses closed, highlighting the brief period in which those were the only kinds of jobs available to apply for.
• Interest has since dissipated as states allow establishments to reopen and the labor market resets to greater normalcy.

Bottom line: Amazon and Walmart could see more interest again as the extra unemployment insurance money gets phased out next month since many of those positions are full time and offer benefits. Many small businesses will likely cut people’s hours to part-time as already shown in the latest Beige Book: “some employers noted that while they didn’t lay off staff, they did reduce the number of hours they worked.”

By contrast, Amazon just announced that the company plans to offer permanent jobs to as many as 70% of those it hired temporarily to meet demand during the COVID-19 Crisis. This full-time work includes health insurance and retirement plans.

In sum, the assumption that high unemployment payments will keep workers from returning to the labor market is deeply flawed; there is and will be too much competition for jobs to make this a lasting issue. The Beige Book shows it is happening to some degree, but employers – especially those who took federal assistance – can only hold off on offering people their jobs back for so long. Even though some workers may refuse employment, there are clearly many Americans actively seeking jobs in retail and leisure and hospitality again as they become available in reopened states.

Sources:

Fed Beige Book: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/BeigeBook_20200527.pdf

Amazon announcement: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon-com-workers-idUSKBN2341FD

The US has slammed what it’s dubbed the “distraction” of five Iranian fuel tankers delivering gasoline to Maduro’s Venezuela, after four total tankers have successfully reached the sanctions-hit country, with a fifth soon to follow.

A US State Department spokesman downplayed the whole ordeal, which included large Venezuelan military escorts of warships and fighter alongside the tankers for the final 200 miles to the coast, as an orchestrated distraction which will not stop Washington from continuing to “press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy.”

For days prior to the cross-Atlantic transport, the Trump administration said it was weighing a response, while Caracas complained last week to the UN of “the threat of imminent use of military force by the United States against Iranian vessels carrying Venezuelan-directed gasoline.”

At least two of the tankers, the first couple to arrive, are now docked and discharging their fuel, while the fifth vessel, the Clavel, is still crossing the Atlantic Ocean, headed toward the Caribbean. Their safe arrival sparked national celebrations in both ‘rogue’ countries Iran and Venezuela. 

Iran had previously warned that any US attempt at intercepting its fuel tankers “would have serious repercussions for the Trump administration ahead of the November elections” — suggesting the return of a tit-for-tat tanker war scenario such as played out in the gulf last summer.

The Iranian flag was raised over downtown Caracas this week:

For Iran to send oil and gas tankers to Venezuela and both countries under US economic sanctions, and that the payment in gold be in place of the dollar,this means that a new economic system has been formed and that dispensing with the dollar is imminent. Iranian flag near Chavez pic.twitter.com/WxccufRjkg

— Zaid Arafat (@Zaid88337958) May 23, 2020

But apparently a potential US-Iran-Venezuela crisis in the Caribbean has been averted. Indeed the White House is now facing multiple crises and doesn’t appear in the mood to indulge in any “distraction” in ‘America’s backyard’ waters at this crucial time.

Venezuelan jets escort Iranian oil tankers carrying fuel for Venezuela, which is suffering a fuel shortage, despite having huge oil reserves. President Maduro thanked Iran, depicting their two countries as “revolutionary peoples who will never kneel down before [US] imperialism.” pic.twitter.com/KeBxuuXnoF

— Mike (@Doranimated) May 26, 2020

Not only are tensions with China at boiling point, especially now wrangling over the Hong Kong issue, but the corona-crisis is continuing, now with Minnesota race riots and entire city blocks in American on fire — and a White House battle over ‘Twitter censorship’ to boot.