The Payroll Protection Program, or the PPP, is the crown jewel of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act’s attempt to rescue small businesses from effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, the program has been a mess in its implementation and its results. This predictable failure is likely to distort and delay our economic recovery.
Here’s the idea behind the PPP: The Small Business Administration, with the help of the Treasury Department, would issue hundreds of billions of dollars in low-interest-rate loans to small businesses. In theory, all small businesses with fewer than 500 employees qualified. Also in theory, if a business used 75 percent or more of its loan to cover payroll costs and keep paying workers for an eight-week period after the loan was granted, that loan would be forgiven.
In practice, things didn’t work out as planned. First, the application process was a mess. Lenders kept changing the terms or decided they would only lend to businesses that already had an account with them. Many small businesses were thus left looking for lenders. Then, the SBA—an agency infamous for its terrible record helping small businesses after disasters—rejected applicants for all sorts of reasons, including not being able to jump through the agency-made regulatory requirements.
Data also reveal that some enterprises with far more than the maximum of 500 employees—many of them publicly traded—got large loans approved before many others could even get access to a bank to apply. Some large firms, including Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Shake Shack, returned the money, but others have dragged their feet. Companies like these usually have plenty of access to capital elsewhere, which is not always the case with small businesses. The size of the loans these big guys got would make your eyes pop, especially compared with what smaller companies in direr straits got.
Meanwhile, a fair number of self-employed workers—who constitute 81 percent of all small businesses—could not get a PPP loan because in the eyes of the federal government, they don’t actually exist as businesses.
Take science-based syndicated columnist and author Amy Alkon. As she told me via email a few weeks ago, because of coronavirus, she’s had a big cutback in earnings. She explained, “I need to avoid just burning through my savings until I’m living in a tent under an underpass.” Yet, she hasn’t been able to get a loan with PPP.
The anecdotal evidence that PPP didn’t make it to the right places is confirmed by several academic papers so far. The authors of a National Bureau of Economic Research paper titled “Did The Paycheck Protection Program Hit the Target?” find that the funds didn’t flow to where the economic shock was greatest.
According to calculations by MIT’s Lawrence Schmidt and Northwestern University’s Dimitris Papanikolaou, the professional and technical services sector received the largest number of PPP loans—around $65 billion in total. This sector also has the highest fraction of workers who are remote and, hence, are least exposed to pandemic-related disruptions. They also reported that nonremote, lower-paid workers were 15 percentage points more likely to be unemployed compared with workers in sectors where working remotely is an option.
Using 2017 estimates of employment in firms with fewer than 500 employees, the professional and technical services sector received $12,500 per employee. By contrast, accommodation and food services, a sector hit much harder, received a mere $4,800 per employee.
Finally, while the PPP allows for loan forgiveness in theory, generous and easy-to-get unemployment benefits given to workers during the coronavirus response mean that many firms will have a hard time retaining enough employees to qualify for it. That will be an unwelcome surprise to those who received a loan under the lure of forgiveness.
The bottom line is that the PPP was poorly thought through, implemented, and administered, and even more poorly targeted—in other words, typical congressional carelessness.
This is Part II of a series on the history of the global Antifa movement.Part I described Antifa and explored the ideological origins of the group. Part II examines the history, tactics and goals of the movement in the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that the American government would designate Antifa — a militant “anti-fascist” movement — as a terrorist organization due to the violence that erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States.
The Code of Federal Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85) defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
American media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have jumped to its defense. They argue that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure.
As the following report shows, Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a clear ideological agenda: to subvert, often with extreme violence, the American political system, with the ultimate aim of replacing capitalism with communism. In the United States, Antifa’s immediate aim is to remove President Trump from office.
Gatestone Institute has identified Antifa groups in all 50 U.S. states, with the possible exception of West Virginia. Some states, including California, Texas and Washington, appear to have dozens of sub-regional Antifa organizations.
It is difficult precisely to determine the size of the Antifa movement in the United States. The so-called “Anti-Fascists of Reddit,” the “premier anti-fascist community” on the social media platform Reddit, has approximately 60,000 members. The oldest Antifa group in America, the Portland, Oregon-based “Rose City Antifa,” has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and 20,000 Facebook followers, not all of whom are necessarily supporters. “It’s Going Down,” a media platform for anarchists, anti-fascists and autonomous anti-capitalists, has 85,000 Twitter followers and 30,000 Facebook followers.
Germany, which has roughly one-quarter of the population of the United States, is home to 33,000 extreme leftists, of whom 9,000 are believed to be extremely dangerous, according to the domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV). Violent left-wing agitators are predominantly male, between 21 and 24 years of age, usually unemployed, and, according to BfV, 92% still live with their parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Antifa members in the United States have a similar socio-economic profile.
In America, national Antifa groups, including “Torch Antifa Network,” “Refuse Fascism” and “World Can’t Wait” are being financed — often generously, as shown below — by individual donors as well as by large philanthropic organizations, including the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros.
To evade detection by law enforcement, Antifa groups in the United States often use encrypted social media platforms, such as Signal and Telegram Messenger, to communicate and coordinate their activities, sometimes across state lines. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.
Historical Origins of American Antifa
In the United States, Antifa’s ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.
As in Europe, the aims and objectives of the American Antifa movement can be traced back to a single, overarching century-long ideological war against the “fascist ideals” of capitalism and Christianity, which the Antifa movement wants to replace with a “revolutionary socialist alternative.”
The first so-called anti-fascist group in the United States was the American League Against War and Fascism, established in 1933 by the Communist Party USA. The League, which claimed to oppose fascism in Europe, was actually dedicated to subverting and overthrowing the U.S. government.
In testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1953, CPUSA leader Manning Johnson revealed that the American party had been instructed by the Communist International in the 1930s to set up the American League Against War and Fascism:
“as a cover to attack our government, our social system, our leaders… used as a cover to attack our law-enforcement agencies and to build up mass hate against them… used as a cover to undermine national security… used as a cover to defend Communists, the sworn enemies of our great heritage… used as a cover for preparing millions of people ideologically and organizationally for the overthrow of the United States Government.”
A precursor to the modern Antifa movement was the Black Panthers, a revolutionary political organization established in October 1966 by Marxist college students in Oakland, California. The group advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government.
Historian Robyn C. Spencer noted that Black Panther leaders were deeply influenced by “The United Front of the Working Class Against Fascism,” a report by Georgi Dimitroff delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in July and August 1935:
“By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a theoretical framework to critique the U.S. political economy. They defined fascism as ‘the power of finance capital’ which ‘manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE CAPITAL — the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician, and the racist pig cop.'”
In July 1969, the Black Panthers organized an “anti-fascist” conference called “United Front Against Fascism,” attended by nearly 5,000 activists:
“The Panthers hoped to create a ‘national force’ with a ‘common revolutionary ideology and political program which answers the basic desires and needs of all people in fascist, capitalist, racist America.'”
The last day of the conference was devoted to a detailed plan by the Black Panthers to decentralize police forces nationwide. Spencer wrote:
“They proposed amending city charters to establish autonomous community-based police departments for every city which would be accountable to local neighborhood police control councils comprised of 15 elected community members. They launched the National Committees to Combat Fascism (NCCF), a multiracial nationwide network, to organize for community control of the police.”
In 1970, members of the Black Panthers created a terrorist group called the Black Liberation Army, whose stated goal was to “weaken the enemy capitalist state.”
BLA member Assata Shakur described the group’s organizational structure, which is similar to the one used by today’s Antifa movement:
“The Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common leadership and chain of command. Instead there were various organizations and collectives working together out of various cities, and in some larger cities there were often several groups working independently of each other.”
Other ideological anchors of the modern Antifa movement in the United States include a left-wing terrorist group known as the Weather Underground Organization, the American equivalent to Germany’s Red Army Faction. The Weather Underground, responsible for bombings and riots throughout the 1970s, sought to achieve “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world.”
Former FBI Counterterrorism Director Terry Turchie has noted the similarities between Black Lives Matter today and the Black Panther Party and Weather Underground groups of the 1960s and 1970s:
“The Black Panther Party was a Marxist Maoist Leninist organization and that came from Huey Newton, one of the co-founders, who said we’re standing for nothing more than the total transformation of the United States government.
“He went on to explain that they wanted to take the tension that already existed in black communities and exacerbate it where they can. To take those situations where there is a tinderbox and light the country on fire.
“Today we’re seeing the third revolution and they think they can make this happen. The only thing that is different are the names of the groups.”
American Antifa
The roots of the modern Antifa movement in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, with the establishment of Anti-Racist Action, a network of anarchist punk rock aficionados dedicated to fist-fighting neo-Nazi skinheads.
Mark Bray, author of “The Antifa Handbook,” explained:
“In many cases, the North American modern Antifa movement grew up as a way to defend the punk scene from the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, and the founders of the original Anti-Racist Action network in North America were anti-racist skinheads. The fascist/anti-fascist struggle was essentially a fight for control of the punk scene during the 1980s, and that was true across of much of north America and in parts of Europe in this era.
“There’s a huge overlap between radical left politics and the punk scene, and there’s a stereotype about dirty anarchists and punks, which is an oversimplification but grounded in a certain amount of truth.”
Anti-Racist Action was inspired by Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in Britain in the late 1970s. The American group shared the British group’s penchant for violently attacking political opponents. ARA was eventually renamed the Torch Network, which currently brings together nine militant Antifa groups.
In November 1999, mobs of masked anarchists, predecessors to today’s Antifa movement, laid waste to downtown Seattle, Washington, during violent demonstrations that disrupted a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization. The Seattle WTO protests birthed the anti-globalization movement.
In April 2001, an estimated 50,000 anti-capitalists gathered in Quebec to oppose the Third Summit of the Americas, a meeting of North and South American leaders who were negotiating a deal to create a free trade area that would encompass the Western Hemisphere.
In February 2003, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated against the Iraq War. After the war went ahead anyway, some parts of the so-called progressive movement became more radicalized and birthed the current Antifa movement.
The Rose City Antifa (RCA), founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2007, is the oldest American group to use “Antifa” in its name. Antifa is derived from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. Antifa’s logo, with two flags representing anarchism (black flag) and communism (red flag), are derived from the German Antifa movement.
The American Antifa movement gained momentum in 2016, after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist, lost the Democratic Party’s nomination to Hillary Clinton. Grassroots supporters of Sanders vowed to continue his “political revolution” to establish socialism in America.
Meanwhile, immigration became a new flashpoint in American politics after Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to reduce illegal migration. In June 2016, protestors violently attacked supporters of Donald Trump outside a rally in San Jose, California. In January 2017, hundreds of Antifa rioters tried to disrupt President Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC.
In February 2017, Antifa rioters employing so-called black bloc tactics — they wear black clothing, masks or other face-concealing items so that they cannot be identified by police — shut down a speech by Milos Yiannopoulos, a far-right activist who was slated to speak at the University of California at Berkeley, the birthplace of the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Antifa radicals claimed that Yiannopoulos was planning to “out” undocumented students at Berkeley for the purpose of having them arrested. Masked Antifa vandals armed with Molotov cocktails, bricks and a host of other makeshift weapons fought police and caused more than $100,000 in property damage.
In June 2018, Republican Representative Dan Donovan of New York introduced Bill HR 6054 — “Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018” — that calls for prison sentences of up to 15 years for anyone who, while wearing a mask or disguise, “injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates” someone else who is exercising any right or privilege guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The bill remains stalled in the House of Representatives.
In July 2019, Antifa radical Willem Van Spronsen attempted to firebomb the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. He was killed in a confrontation with police.
That same month, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy introduced a resolution that would label Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” The resolution stated:
“Whereas members of Antifa, because they believe that free speech is equivalent to violence, have used threats of violence in the pursuit of suppressing opposing political ideologies; Whereas Antifa represents opposition to the democratic ideals of peaceful assembly and free speech for all; Whereas members of Antifa have physically assaulted journalists and other individuals during protests and riots in Berkeley, California;
“Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate … calls for the groups and organizations across the country who act under the banner of Antifa to be designated as domestic terrorist organizations.”
“Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who ‘fight fascism’ with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege,” said Cassidy. “Bullies get their way until someone says no. Elected officials must have courage, not cowardice, to prevent terror.”
Antifa Exploits Death of George Floyd
Antifa radicals increasingly are using incendiary events such as the death of George Floyd in Minnesota as springboards to achieve their broader aims, one of which includes removing President Trump from office.
Veteran national security correspondent Bill Gertz recently reported that the Antifa movement began planning to foment a nationwide anti-government insurgency as early as November 2019, when the U.S. presidential campaign season kicked off in earnest. Former National Security Council staff member Rich Higgins said:
“Antifa’s actions represent a hard break with the long tradition of a peaceful political process in the United States. Their Marxist ideology seeks not only to influence elections in the short term but to destroy the use of elections as the determining factor in political legitimacy.
“Antifa’s goal is nothing less than fomenting revolution, civil war and silencing America’s anti-communists. Their labeling of Trump supporters and patriots as Nazis and racists is standard fare for left-wing communist groups.
“Antifa is currently functioning as the command and control of the riots, which are themselves the overt utilization of targeted violence against targets such as stores — capitalism; monuments — history; and churches — God.”
Joe Myers, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official and counterinsurgency expert, added:
“President Trump’s election and revitalization of America are a threat to Antifa’s nihilist goals. They are fomenting this violence to create havoc, despair and to target the Trump campaign for defeat in 2020. It is employing organized violence for political ends: destruction of the constitutional order.”
New York’s top terrorism officer, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, explained why the George Floyd protests in New York City became so violent and destructive:
“No. 1, before the protests began, organizers of certain anarchist groups set out to raise bail money and people who would be responsible to be raising bail money, they set out to recruit medics and medical teams with gear to deploy in anticipation of violent interactions with police.
“They prepared to commit property damage and directed people who were following them that this should be done selectively and only in wealthier areas or at high-end stores run by corporate entities.
“And they developed a complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were and where police were not for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to places where they could commit acts of vandalism including the torching of police vehicles and Molotov cocktails where they thought officers would not be.
“We believe that a significant amount of people who came here from out of the area, who have come here as well as the advance preparation, having advance scouts, the use of encrypted information, having resupply routes for things such as gasoline and accelerants as well as rocks and bottles, the raising of bail, the placing of medics. Taken together, this is a strong indicator that they planned to act with disorder, property damage, violence, and violent encounters with police before the first demonstration and/or before the first arrest.”
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Bernard B. Kerik, former police commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said that Antifa “100 percent exploited” the George Floyd protests:
“It’s in 40 different states and 60 cities; it would be impossible for somebody outside of Antifa to fund this. It’s a radical, leftist, socialist attempt at revolution.
“They’re coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn’t do this on their own. Somebody’s paying for this.
“What Antifa is doing is they’re basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset.”
After photos appeared to show protesters with military-grade communications radios and earpieces, Kerik noted: “They have to be talking to somebody at a central command center with a repeater. Where do those radios go to?”
Across the country, in Bellevue, Washington, which was also hit by looting and violence, Police Chief Steve Mylett confirmed that the people responsible were organized, from out of town, and being paid:
“There are groups paying these looters money to come in and they’re getting paid by the broken window. This is something totally different we are dealing with that we have never seen as a profession before. We did have officers that were in different areas that were chasing these groups. When we make contact, they just disperse.”
Antifa Financing
The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.
AFGJ, which describes itself as “anti-capitalist” and opposed to the principles of liberal democracy, provides “fiscal sponsorship” to groups advocating numerous foreign and domestic far-left and extreme-left causes, including eliminating the State of Israel.
The Tucson, Arizona-based AFGJ, and people associated with it, have advocated for socialist and communist authoritarian regimes, including in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In the 2000s, AFGJ was involved in anti-globalization demonstrations. In the 2010s, AFGJ was a financial sponsor of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
AFGJ has received substantial funding from organizations often claiming to be the mainstream of the center-left. The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the Ben & Jerry Foundation and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.
One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism, a radical left-wing organization devoted to promoting nationwide action to remove from office President Donald Trump, and all officials associated with his administration, on the grounds that they constitute a “fascist regime.” The group has been present at many Antifa radical-left demonstrations, also according to Influence Watch. The group is an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).
In July 2017, the RCP bragged that it took part in violent riots against the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. The RCP has argued that capitalism is synonymous with fascism and that the election of President Trump would lead the U.S. government to “bludgeon and eliminate whole groups of people.”
In June 2020, Refuse Fascism took advantage of the death of George Floyd to raise money for a “National Revolution Tour” evidently aimed at subverting the U.S. government. The group’s slogan states: “This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!”
Antifa’s “Utopia”
Meanwhile, in Seattle, Washington, Antifa radicals, protesters from Black Lives Matter, and members of the anti-capitalist John Brown Gun Club seized control of the East Precinct neighborhood and established a six-square-block “autonomous zone” called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, “CHAZ,” recently renamed “CHOP,” the Capitol Hill Organized (or Occupied) Protest. A cardboard sign at the barricades declares: “You are now leaving the USA.” The group issued a list of 30 demands, including the “abolition” of the Seattle Police Department and court system.
“Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we’re not able to get to them,” said Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Several people have been wounded or killed.
Christopher F. Rufo, a contributing editor of City Journal, observed:
“The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone has set a dangerous precedent: armed left-wing activists have asserted their dominance of the streets and established an alternative political authority over a large section of a neighborhood. They have claimed de facto police power over thousands of residents and dozens of businesses — completely outside of the democratic process. In a matter of days, Antifa-affiliated paramilitaries have created a hardened border, established a rudimentary form of government based on principles of intersectional representation, and forcibly removed unfriendly media from the territory.
“The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is an occupation and taking of hostages: none of the neighborhood’s residents voted for Antifa as their representative government. Rather than enforce the law, Seattle’s progressive political class capitulated to the mob and will likely make massive concessions over the next few months. This will embolden the Antifa coalition — and further undermine the rule of law in American cities.”
Antifa in its Own Words
The American Antifa movement’s long-term objectives are identical to those of the Antifa movement in Europe: replacing capitalism with a communist utopia. Mark Bray, one of the most vocal apologists for Antifa in the United States and author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” explained:
“The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others. This long-term goal points to the tensions that exist in defining anti-fascism, because at a certain point destroying fascism is really about promoting a revolutionary socialist alternative.”
Nikkita Oliver, former mayoral candidate of Seattle, Washington, added:
“We need to align ourselves with the global struggle that acknowledges that the United States plays a role in racialized capitalism. Racialized capitalism is built upon patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism.”
Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, confirmed that the immediate goal is to remove President Trump from office:
“Trump not only needs to not be in office in November, but he should resign now. Trump needs to be out of office. He is not fit for office. And so, what we are going to push for is a move to get Trump out. While we’re also going to continue to push and pressure Joe Biden around his policies and relationship to policing and criminalization. That’s going to be important. But our goal is to get Trump out.”
“As antifascists we know that our fight is not just against organized fascism, but also against the capitalist state, and the police that protect it. Another world is possible!”
“This is the revolution, this is our time and we will make no excuses for the terror.”
A group called PNW Youth Liberation Front, Antifa’s youth organization, tweeted:
“The only way to win a world without police, prisons, borders, etc. is to destroy the oppressive systems which we are currently caught in. We must continue the fight against the state, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and so on if we ever want to be free.”
A pamphlet distributed in the Seattle “Autonomous Zone” stated:
“The idea that the working class can control our own lives, without states, governments or borders, is also called anarchism. But how do we get from our current capitalist society to a future anarchist-communist one? …. In order to destroy the current order, there will need to be a revolution, a time of great upheaval.”
“Oh, you thought I just wanted to defund the police? This whole system needs to go.”
One of the leaders of the Seattle “Autonomous Zone” said:
“Every single day that I show up here I’m not here to peacefully protest. I’m here to disrupt until my demands are met. You cannot rebuild until you break it all the way down. Respond to the demands of the people or prepare to be met with any means necessary. By any means necessary. It’s not a slogan or even a warning. I’m letting people know what comes next.”
A group called the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, which has nearly 15,000 Twitter followers, called for an insurrection:
“Revolutionary greetings from the insurrection sweeping throughout the occupied territories of the so-called United States of America.
“As the history of this miserable nation repeats itself once again, what has become clearly evident is that black people have been and will continue to be the only revolutionary force that is capable of toppling the oppressive status quo.
“Everywhere the pigs [a derogatory term for police] have lost their will to fight. Their eyes, which only yesterday were windows to empty hatred and contempt, now display stultifying self-doubt and cowardice. For once, their behavior portrays their weakness as every step they take back is marked by hesitation.
“Together, if we keep pushing, this land of chattel slavery, indigenous genocide, and foreign imperial aggression can finally be wiped out so that it will only be remembered as one of the more ugly chapters in human history.”
“This isn’t protest. This is rebellion. When rebellion gets organized we get revolution. We are seeing the beginnings of that and it’s glorious.”
An Antifa agitator from New York comments on the American flag:
“That sh*t is a fucking cloth with colors on it. It doesn’t live or breathe and is nothing but a representation. Any Black, Latinx, or Native person looking at that thing being respected, should be offended at that flag that represents genocide, rape, slavery, and colonization.”
An Antifa media platform, “It’s Going Down,” wrote:
“Looting is an effective means of wealth redistribution.”
An Antifa activist from North Carolina on free speech:
“The idea that freedom of speech is the most important thing that we can protect can only be held by someone who thinks that life is analogous to a debate hall. In my opinion, ‘no platforming’ fascists often infringes (sic) upon their speech, but this infringement is justified for its role in the political struggle against fascism.”
Torch Antifa Network, in response to President Trump’s announced plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist group:
“Antifa will be designating the United States of America as a terrorist organization.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3extHDv Tyler Durden
Thinking About Downsizing? Here Are Top Most Popular States For Tiny Home Living Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/24/2020 – 23:25
Most Americans aren’t prepared for an extended slowdown in the economy. To prepare, one must cut expenses, build savings, and even downsize.
There’s nothing wrong with downsizing in a recession – it’s survival of the fittest – and with a recovery that could take several years – this could be one of the best ways to weather the financial storm.
Not taking the precautionary measures to shore up one’s finances in a downturn could prove disastrous – but for those who make the transition to tiny homes, it could result in minimal debt and economic freedom for when the next expansion arrives.
The tiny home movement started about a decade ago among heavily indebted millennials who couldn’t afford to purchase the average home. In other words, they simply couldn’t afford the American dream.
Living in less than 1,000 square feet space could be the norm for many Americans or at least for the ones who downsize. There is no clear guidance on the economic recovery – despite the Trump administration cheerleading imminent V-shaped recovery ahead of elections – though, we all know it’s all election bullshit propaganda, and an actual recovery could take several years. As for the labor market, the unemployment level is expected to stay elevated through 2021.
For those who have considered downsizing – HomeAdvisor has compiled a list of the most popular states for tiny home living. The site used geolocation data from Instagram posts containing the #tinyliving hashtag was used to determine the best areas.
HomeAdvisor’s top ten most popular US states for tiny home living:
California
Florida
Colorado
Texas
Oregon
Washington
Arizona
North Carolina
New York
Utah
For anyone thinking about fleeing a metro area because of social unrest and second round of coronavirus – well, right now might be the perfect window of opportunity to discover tiny home living in a rural community, which will serve two purposes: first, save money and cut expenses; second, isolate oneself and or family from collapsing American inner cities.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2B7wNQm Tyler Durden
“Violence creates many more social problems than it solves…. If they succumb to the temptation of using violence in their struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence isn’t the way.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Marches, protests, boycotts, sit-ins: these are nonviolent tactics that work.
Looting, vandalism, the destruction of public property, intimidation tactics aimed at eliminating anything that might cause offense to the establishment: these tactics of mobs and bullies may work in the short term, but they will only give rise to greater injustices in the long term.
George Floyd’s death sparked the flame of outrage over racial injustice and police brutality, but political correctness is creating a raging inferno that threatens to engulf the nation.
Activists who object to Yale University being named after its founder Elihu Yale, a slave trader, are lobbying to re-name the school.
Students at Harvard University want to re-name Mather House, one of the dorms named after Increase Mather, the college president from 1685 to 1692 and a slave owner.
Administrators at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden, N.J.—named after the nation’s 28th president, who guided the nation through World War I while upholding segregation policies—are now looking for a new name.
Gone with the Wind, the Civil War epic that won 10 Academy Awards and has long been considered one of the greatest films of all times, was temporarily pulled from HBOMax’s streaming service in response to concerns that it depicts “ethnic and racial prejudices” that “were wrong then and are wrong today.”
What started as a movement to denounce police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of killer cops has become a free-for-all campaign to rid the country of any monument, literal or figurative, to anyone who may have at any time in history expressed a racist thought, exhibited racist behavior, or existed within a racist society.
The police state has got us exactly where it wants us: distracted, distraught and divided.
While protesters topple statues of men with racist pasts who are long dead, unarmed Americans continue to be killed by militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
While activists use their collective might to pressure corporations to rebrand products in a more racially sensitive fashion, the American police state—aided and abetted by the Corporate State—continues to disproportionately target blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
And while politically correct censorship is attempting to sanitize the public sphere of words and images that denigrate minorities, it is not doing anything to rid hearts and minds of racism.
Muzzling speech, censoring discourse, erasing history: that’s the worst possible antidote.
As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone, concluded in the “Deaths-Head Revisited” episode:
“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes, all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard. Into it, they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers.”
In other words, what we need is more speech, more discourse, and a greater understanding of history and the evils perpetrated in the name of conquest, profit and racial supremacy. Because if we bury the mistakes of the past under a sanitized present, if we fail to at least provide context to the past, we risk allowing the government to repeat those past mistakes—rewritten for a new age—and no one will be the wiser.
It has happened already: we have allowed the government strip people of their humanity; to segregate them into polarized classes; to treat them as chattel; to deny them basic human rights; and to reduce them to figures on a ledger sheet.
Censoring speech—toppling monuments—kowtowing to political correctness—is not the answer to what ails this nation.
As long as we focus on words and ignore the systemic injustices that undergird the words, the disease will spread.
As long as we continue to allow the most controversial issues of our day—gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.—to serve as battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support, we will all eventually lose.
Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree – whether it’s by shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them – only empowers the controllers of the Deep State.
Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination.
Offensive, politically incorrect and “unsafe” speech: Disguised as tolerance, civility and love, political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite. Consequently, college campuses have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and “red light” speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended.
Bullying, intimidating speech: Warning that “school bullies become tomorrow’s hate crimes defendants,” the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying, going so far as to classify “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.”
Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its ongoing war on “extremism,” the government partnered with the tech industry to establish a task force to counter online “propaganda” by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks (the program started under President Obama). In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted. They might even find themselves pulled from their homes, arrested by the police and thrown into a mental hospital for expressing their opposition to government policies, as happened to Marine Brandon Raub.
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship.
It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other, they’re incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.
The antidote to intolerance is more tolerance.
What this requires is opening the door to more speech not less, even if that speech is offensive to some.
Understanding that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the media freely.
The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world.
When there is no steam valve—when there is no one to hear what the people have to say—frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation. By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.
By becoming so fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful or closed-minded that we’ve eliminated words, phrases and symbols from public discourse, we have entered into an egotistical, insulated, narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech: to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise, unless it moves so far beyond our political, religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable.
Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) have conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good.
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
The end result: free speech is no longer free, and injustice persists.
So what we can do to end racial inequality, police brutality, and systemic injustice that does not involve sacrificing free speech on the altar of political correctness or adopting violent tactics?
Stop tiptoeing around, easily offended or afraid to cause offense. Stop allowing the government and its architects to micromanage your life and curtail your freedoms. Stop being a pawn in someone else’s game.
Find your own voice. Give voice to your own outrage. Speak truth to power nonviolently. And throughout it all, love your enemies and put that love into action.
That last point, to love your enemies, is the hardest of all, yet it was the principle that Jesus Christ spoke of most often: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.”
This principle was also at the core of Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts to combat racism and injustice. In fact, King delivered an entire sermon on what it means to love one’s enemies even when they continue to wrong you.
King was not speaking in abstracts. This was a man who, despite having faced down water cannons, police dogs and police brutality, intimidation and prejudice and assassination attempts, still insisted that “mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love” was his best weapon.
The first step in loving one’s enemies, says King, is to discover the element of good in them. “Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it… There is an element of goodness that he can never slough off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.”
Second, says King, focus on defeating evil systems, rather than vanquishing individuals caught up in an evil system. “Love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape [the love of God working in the lives of men] in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, ‘Love your enemy.’ This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.”
Third, says Kings, cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe with love. “If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends… And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe… Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody.”
Fourth, says King, hate ends up in tragic, neurotic responses. “Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life. So Jesus says love, because hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.” Instead, use love to redeem and transform those who would do you harm.
Lastly, don’t resort to violence.
King’s conclusion to his sermon is a timeless message, sent through time, to our present age. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are still fighting the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism. We are still struggling to find our way in the world dominated by corporate greed and political ambition. We are still being manipulated into focusing our anger on flawed individuals rather than working to defeat evil establishments.
Sixty-three years later, King’s words are still relevant:
“Our world is in transition now. Our whole world is facing a revolution. Our nation is facing a revolution. History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors. And there are … ways that individuals who are oppressed can deal with their oppression. One of them is to rise up against their oppressors with physical violence and corroding hatred. But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love… This is the only way. And our civilization must discover that. Individuals must discover that as they deal with other individuals… [T]o a power-drunk generation … love is the only way… to a generation depending on nuclear and atomic energy, a generation depending on physical violence…love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe…. [T]hrough the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed… because we had the power to love our enemies, to bless those persons that cursed us, to even decide to be good to those persons who hated us, and we even prayed for those persons who despitefully used us.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2B7eTx7 Tyler Durden
In March 2020, United States District Judge Lynn Adelman published a law review article entitled The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy. 14 Harv. Law & Policy Rev. 131. Three complaints were filed under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act asserting that the publication of the article amounted to judicial misconduct. Chief Judge Diane P. Wood consolidated the complaints for disposition and appointed a committee under 28 U.S.C. § 353 and Rule 11(f) of the Rules for Judicial Conduct and Judicial‐Disability Proceedings. Chief Judge Wood served ex officio. District Judge Robert M. Dow, Jr. served on the committee, and Circuit Judge David F. Hamilton served as chair.
The committee reviewed the article and available information, including Judge Adelman’s responses to the complaints, and concluded that there was no need for a hearing for further evidence to resolve the complaints. The committee submitted a report and recommendation to the Judicial Council of the Seventh Circuit, which has approved the proposed resolution of the complaints as set forth below….
The article speaks for itself, but a brief summary will make the discussion of the complaints and the issues clearer. The overall thesis is that over the last fifteen years, the Supreme Court of the United States has issued a number of decisions that have undermined the rights of poor people and minorities to vote and that have increased the economic and political power of corporations and wealthy individuals. The result, the article argues, is a form of government that is not as responsive as it should be to the will of the majority of the people.
Regarding diminished voting rights of poor people and minorities, the article discusses decisions on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including Shelby County v. Holder and Abbott v. Perez, as well as cases on purges of voting rolls (Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute), voter‐identification requirements (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board), and legislative gerrymandering based on party affiliation (Rucho v. Common Cause).
The discussion of corporate power focuses on campaign finance decisions, including Randall v. Sorrell, Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. FEC, Davis v. FEC, Citizens United v. FEC, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, and McCutcheon v. FEC. The discussion also addresses expansion of commercial free‐speech rights in Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc. and several decisions reducing the rights of organized labor, including Janus v. AFSCME and Epic Systems v. Lewis.
Judge Adelman’s article argues that all of these decisions, which were resolved by closely divided votes, were decided wrongly and that the cumulative effects of these cases make the United States political system less representative and more fragile, and weaken the economic and political power of the middle class and the poor.
Judge Adelman’s article begins:
“By now it is a truism that Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Supreme Court justice’s role is the passive one of a neutral baseball ‘umpire who [merely] calls the balls and strikes,’ was a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Roberts’ misleading testimony inevitably comes to mind when one considers the course of decision‐ making by the Court over which he presides.”
At various points the article also focuses on the Republican Party’s support for measures to restrict voting rights and to enhance the political and economic power of corporations and the wealthy. The article also describes the party as having become “more partisan, more ideological and more uncompromising.” …
The Council’s analysis:
The nation has a long tradition of vigorous public debate over Supreme Court decisions, and judges, including judges in the district and circuit courts, have long participated in those debates. Judges are able to bring special insight and perspective to those debates. At the same time, judges also have special responsibilities stemming from their roles in dispensing even‐handed justice in all cases that come before them and in strengthening public confidence in the judiciary….
Canon 4 [of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges] encourages judges to write and speak on legal topics, subject to the caution that their activities should not “detract from the dignity of the judge’s office, interfere with the performance of the judge’s official duties, reflect adversely on the judge’s impartiality, [or] lead to frequent disqualification.”
Over more than two centuries, the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary have earned substantial public respect for their fairness and competence. The American people have come to trust federal courts to handle some of our Nation’s most difficult problems when brought to the courts as cases within their jurisdiction. That trust has not been and cannot be taken for granted. Court decisions have long been the topic of fierce debate, from Chisholm v. Georgia, which prompted adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, through the Dred Scott case (denying rights to blacks and leading to Civil War), Plessy v. Ferguson (adopting “separate but equal” standard endorsing racial segregation), Abrams v. United States (upholding criminal convictions for distributing leaflets criticizing U.S. involvement in World War I), Schechter Poultry v. United States (one of many cases striking down economic regulations enacted under New Deal), Brown v. Board of Education (prohibiting racial segregation in public education), Miranda v. Arizona (requiring warnings to suspects before custodial interrogation), Roe v. Wade (finding constitutional right to terminate pregnancy), Bush v. Gore (stopping state recount of votes for President), and Citizens United v. FEC (striking down federal prohibitions on independent election spending by corporations).
Federal judges are under an ethical obligation to refrain from public comment on cases still pending in court, see Canon 3(A)(6), quoted above, but they also are able to offer the public valuable perspectives on the controversial cases of the day after they have been decided. Federal judges have seen the kinds of disputes that led to landmark Supreme Court decisions. They will be on the front lines of enforcing Supreme Court decisions. Judges also are able to bring to bear their professional skills, experience, and training to evaluate the debates among Justices over the meaning and scope of precedents and other legal arguments made in those opinions.
For example, in 1958, Judge Learned Hand of the Second Circuit delivered the Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School and sharply criticized recent Supreme Court decisions on constitutional law, including Brown v. Board of Education and several decisions protecting the rights of people accused of being Communists. Judge Hand asserted that the Supreme Court was acting as a “third legislative chamber” and engaged in “a patent usurpation” of powers not properly belonging to courts.
More recently, Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit often criticized
U.S. Supreme Court decisions in published writings (other than in judicial opinions for this court). See, e.g., Richard A. Posner, Foreword: A Political Court, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 32 (2005) (describing the Supreme Court as a “political organ” and describing its “aggressively political approaches covered by a veneer of legal reasoning”).
Judges criticize one another’s reasoning, sometimes harshly. In fact, much of Judge Adelman’s article draws from dissenting opinions in the decisions he criticizes. Nothing said in this decision on the complaints should be interpreted as suggesting that judges should be silenced from criticizing court decisions…..
[But t]he Code of Conduct makes clear that federal judges, with the authority granted by their appointments, have special responsibilities in their public extrajudicial writings and speaking. They need to write and speak in ways that will not interfere with their work as judges. Their writing and speaking also should not interfere with public perceptions that the judges will approach the cases before them fairly and impartially.
In their daily work of deciding cases, judges inevitably decide issues in contentious debates, yet their decisions are widely accepted as the work of competent and conscientious professionals who impartially apply their training and experience to the law and the facts before them. If a particular judge makes statements, on the bench or off, that undermine confidence in that judge’s ability to approach cases impartially, such statements impair the ability of the entire judicial system to serve the public and to engender the public’s confidence in judicial decisions.
It should perhaps go without saying that it is perfectly possible to disagree and criticize in ways that do not undermine confidence in the professionalism and good faith of those who disagree. At the same time, the judiciary recognizes that there are exceptional cases where there may be legitimate reasons to question the good faith, honesty, and integrity of court decisions. There are unfortunate examples of judges who have not been honest, and detecting and responding to such misconduct is vital for the fair administration of justice. The council is confident, however, that this not one of those cases.
Judges sometimes use harsh language in their disagreements with each other. In criticizing the professional reasoning of colleagues, judges can too easily slide into personal attacks on the professionalism and integrity of those who disagree. Judges recognize this danger. In the overwhelming majority of cases, both on and off the bench, they adhere to standards of civility and collegiality to stay well away from personal attacks, but there are obviously some departures from those standards.
Judges should expect tough criticism of their work. The power conferred by judges’ commissions puts them in the forefront of controversy and debate. They and their work will be criticized, often publicly and sometimes harshly. The council does not mean to suggest that judges’ language and behavior should descend to the lowest and most personal level the public and profession will tolerate. But high‐profile examples, even in opinions from Supreme Court Justices, signal that in terms of imposing coercive measures of judicial discipline, the boundaries between what is permissible and what deserves discipline are not sharp. In addition, because judges may be both the targets of harsh criticisms, from within and without the judiciary, and the officials who impose discipline, judges have a responsibility to be most cautious about using that power to impose discipline for such criticism.
The vast majority of Judge Adelman’s article at issue here consists of substantive criticism of Supreme Court decisions. Those criticisms are well within the boundaries of appropriate discourse. As noted above, much of Judge Adelmanʹs critique draws from the dissenting opinions of Justices in those decisions. Without endorsing or disagreeing with Judge Adelman’s views of those cases, the council finds no ground for discipline with regard to the vast majority of the article.
More concerning, however, are the opening two sentences of the article and the criticisms of recent policy positions taken by one political party. The opening two sentences could reasonably be understood by the public as an attack on the integrity of the Chief Justice rather than disagreement with his votes and opinions in controversial cases. The attacks on Republican party positions could be interpreted, as the complainants have, as calling into question Judge Adelman’s impartiality in matters implicating partisan or ideological concerns. While not addressed by specific rules of judicial conduct, these portions of the article do not promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.
Judge Adelman’s response to the complaints shows that he appreciates that these portions of his article could be understood this way, and he has tried and remains willing to take voluntary corrective action. He tried to amend the article but was told by the publisher that it was too late to do so. Judge Adelman has offered to take corrective action by publicly acknowledging that some points in the article are worded inappropriately, disavowing any intention to criticize the integrity of the Chief Justice or any other Justices, and reaffirming his commitment to impartial administration of justice, in all cases of any type and with any parties. In addition, there is no link between the controversial article and any decisions by Judge Adelman in any particular cases.
In terms of the specific provisions of the Code of Conduct, the council finds that the article is not political activity prohibited under Canon 5. Most of the article is an example of appropriate, or at least permissible, judicial writing on law‐related subjects under Canon 4. The opening two sentences regarding the Chief Justice and the very pointed criticisms of Republican Party policy positions could be seen as inconsistent with a judge’s duty to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary and as reflecting adversely on the judge’s impartiality.
Drawing back from the particular article to look more broadly at Judge Adelman’s career, the council recognizes that he is a thoughtful and hardworking judge who has presided fairly over thousands of cases in his career. He has views on many subjects of law and policy. He also knows that his duty as a judge is to follow the law as it is. He has shown over the years that he decides cases based on the law and the facts, not personal views or inclinations. Nothing in the article or elsewhere indicates that he is not committed to following governing law, whether he personally agrees with it or not.
The Judicial Council concludes that these complaints should be resolved through a public admonition to Judge Adelman that also reminds all judges within the circuit of our obligations to ensure that judges’ public speaking and writing do not undermine public confidence in the fair administration of justice. This admonition shall be coupled with an appropriate public statement by Judge Adelman consistent with his response to the complaints, acknowledging that some language in the article went too far, disavowing any intention to suggest a lack of integrity or professionalism by any Justices on the Supreme Court, and reaffirming his commitment to impartial decision‐ making.
{The council’s resolution is consistent with the Second Circuit’s approach to more serious public comments by Judge Calabresi in 2004. Those comments were reasonably understood as opposing a candidate for president. They also compared President George W. Bush’s path to power as similar in some ways to Hitler and Mussolini’s paths to power and noted that all three had then “exercised extraordinary power.” The Second Circuit Council found a public violation of the Code’s prohibition on political activity. The complaints were resolved by a public admonition combined with the judge’s public apology. The Second Circuit’s handling of the Calabresi case met with approval of the “Breyer Committee,” which described the public comments as “serious misconduct.” The Breyer Committee noted its new standard that “corrective action should be proportionate to any plausible allegations of misconduct in the complaint,” and found the combination of the judge’s apology and the council’s formal admonition, in the form of its endorsement of the acting chief circuit judge’s earlier informal admonition, met that standard by adding “considerable moral and legal force to the reprimand.” This resolution of the complaints against Judge Adelman is also consistent with information cited by the Second Circuit in the Calabresi case indicating that such cases are generally handled through corrective action and/or an apology or acknowledgment of the error.}
Complaints like this, about judges’ non‐judicial writings, have been rare and should stay that way. There is ample room for federal judges to speak and write about the law, including criticisms of past decisions, without prompting appropriate complaints. Judges should be encouraged to do so consistent with Canon 4 for purposes of public and legal education. At the same time, it behooves all federal judicial officers to speak and write about the law with special care for their responsibilities to the public and to the larger judicial system, including refraining from personal attacks.
Judge Adelman responded:
Thank you for the thoughtful consideration that you and the committee that you appointed gave to the above complaints. I have reviewed the committee’s report and recommendation. In response, I first want to acknowledge that, as the committee notes and as I previously conveyed to you, some of the points that I made in the article about the Roberts Court were inappropriately worded. I want to express my deep regret for not being more careful. I never intended to say anything that would impair public confidence in either the judiciary or my own impartiality. As I previously wrote to you, I am strongly committed to the judiciary as an institution and deeply proud of my service as a judge.
More specifically, I apologize for any language that I used that could be construed as questioning the integrity of the Chief Justice or any other member of the Court or as expressing a bias against the Republican Party. As the committee recognizes, the issues that I wrote about are complicated and highly contested, but I did not mean for my critique of some judicial decisions to suggest personal criticism of their authors or of individuals or institutions that have embraced them.
Finally, I want to reaffirm my commitment to the impartial administration of justice in all cases regardless of the nature of the case or the identity of the parties. I have attempted to embody that commitment throughout my tenure as a judge and will continue to do so as long as I serve.
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In March 2020, United States District Judge Lynn Adelman published a law review article entitled The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy. 14 Harv. Law & Policy Rev. 131. Three complaints were filed under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act asserting that the publication of the article amounted to judicial misconduct. Chief Judge Diane P. Wood consolidated the complaints for disposition and appointed a committee under 28 U.S.C. § 353 and Rule 11(f) of the Rules for Judicial Conduct and Judicial‐Disability Proceedings. Chief Judge Wood served ex officio. District Judge Robert M. Dow, Jr. served on the committee, and Circuit Judge David F. Hamilton served as chair.
The committee reviewed the article and available information, including Judge Adelman’s responses to the complaints, and concluded that there was no need for a hearing for further evidence to resolve the complaints. The committee submitted a report and recommendation to the Judicial Council of the Seventh Circuit, which has approved the proposed resolution of the complaints as set forth below….
The article speaks for itself, but a brief summary will make the discussion of the complaints and the issues clearer. The overall thesis is that over the last fifteen years, the Supreme Court of the United States has issued a number of decisions that have undermined the rights of poor people and minorities to vote and that have increased the economic and political power of corporations and wealthy individuals. The result, the article argues, is a form of government that is not as responsive as it should be to the will of the majority of the people.
Regarding diminished voting rights of poor people and minorities, the article discusses decisions on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including Shelby County v. Holder and Abbott v. Perez, as well as cases on purges of voting rolls (Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute), voter‐identification requirements (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board), and legislative gerrymandering based on party affiliation (Rucho v. Common Cause).
The discussion of corporate power focuses on campaign finance decisions, including Randall v. Sorrell, Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. FEC, Davis v. FEC, Citizens United v. FEC, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, and McCutcheon v. FEC. The discussion also addresses expansion of commercial free‐speech rights in Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc. and several decisions reducing the rights of organized labor, including Janus v. AFSCME and Epic Systems v. Lewis.
Judge Adelman’s article argues that all of these decisions, which were resolved by closely divided votes, were decided wrongly and that the cumulative effects of these cases make the United States political system less representative and more fragile, and weaken the economic and political power of the middle class and the poor.
Judge Adelman’s article begins:
“By now it is a truism that Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Supreme Court justice’s role is the passive one of a neutral baseball ‘umpire who [merely] calls the balls and strikes,’ was a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Roberts’ misleading testimony inevitably comes to mind when one considers the course of decision‐ making by the Court over which he presides.”
At various points the article also focuses on the Republican Party’s support for measures to restrict voting rights and to enhance the political and economic power of corporations and the wealthy. The article also describes the party as having become “more partisan, more ideological and more uncompromising.” …
The Council’s analysis:
The nation has a long tradition of vigorous public debate over Supreme Court decisions, and judges, including judges in the district and circuit courts, have long participated in those debates. Judges are able to bring special insight and perspective to those debates. At the same time, judges also have special responsibilities stemming from their roles in dispensing even‐handed justice in all cases that come before them and in strengthening public confidence in the judiciary….
Canon 4 [of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges] encourages judges to write and speak on legal topics, subject to the caution that their activities should not “detract from the dignity of the judge’s office, interfere with the performance of the judge’s official duties, reflect adversely on the judge’s impartiality, [or] lead to frequent disqualification.”
Over more than two centuries, the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary have earned substantial public respect for their fairness and competence. The American people have come to trust federal courts to handle some of our Nation’s most difficult problems when brought to the courts as cases within their jurisdiction. That trust has not been and cannot be taken for granted. Court decisions have long been the topic of fierce debate, from Chisholm v. Georgia, which prompted adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, through the Dred Scott case (denying rights to blacks and leading to Civil War), Plessy v. Ferguson (adopting “separate but equal” standard endorsing racial segregation), Abrams v. United States (upholding criminal convictions for distributing leaflets criticizing U.S. involvement in World War I), Schechter Poultry v. United States (one of many cases striking down economic regulations enacted under New Deal), Brown v. Board of Education (prohibiting racial segregation in public education), Miranda v. Arizona (requiring warnings to suspects before custodial interrogation), Roe v. Wade (finding constitutional right to terminate pregnancy), Bush v. Gore (stopping state recount of votes for President), and Citizens United v. FEC (striking down federal prohibitions on independent election spending by corporations).
Federal judges are under an ethical obligation to refrain from public comment on cases still pending in court, see Canon 3(A)(6), quoted above, but they also are able to offer the public valuable perspectives on the controversial cases of the day after they have been decided. Federal judges have seen the kinds of disputes that led to landmark Supreme Court decisions. They will be on the front lines of enforcing Supreme Court decisions. Judges also are able to bring to bear their professional skills, experience, and training to evaluate the debates among Justices over the meaning and scope of precedents and other legal arguments made in those opinions.
For example, in 1958, Judge Learned Hand of the Second Circuit delivered the Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School and sharply criticized recent Supreme Court decisions on constitutional law, including Brown v. Board of Education and several decisions protecting the rights of people accused of being Communists. Judge Hand asserted that the Supreme Court was acting as a “third legislative chamber” and engaged in “a patent usurpation” of powers not properly belonging to courts.
More recently, Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit often criticized
U.S. Supreme Court decisions in published writings (other than in judicial opinions for this court). See, e.g., Richard A. Posner, Foreword: A Political Court, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 32 (2005) (describing the Supreme Court as a “political organ” and describing its “aggressively political approaches covered by a veneer of legal reasoning”).
Judges criticize one another’s reasoning, sometimes harshly. In fact, much of Judge Adelman’s article draws from dissenting opinions in the decisions he criticizes. Nothing said in this decision on the complaints should be interpreted as suggesting that judges should be silenced from criticizing court decisions…..
[But t]he Code of Conduct makes clear that federal judges, with the authority granted by their appointments, have special responsibilities in their public extrajudicial writings and speaking. They need to write and speak in ways that will not interfere with their work as judges. Their writing and speaking also should not interfere with public perceptions that the judges will approach the cases before them fairly and impartially.
In their daily work of deciding cases, judges inevitably decide issues in contentious debates, yet their decisions are widely accepted as the work of competent and conscientious professionals who impartially apply their training and experience to the law and the facts before them. If a particular judge makes statements, on the bench or off, that undermine confidence in that judge’s ability to approach cases impartially, such statements impair the ability of the entire judicial system to serve the public and to engender the public’s confidence in judicial decisions.
It should perhaps go without saying that it is perfectly possible to disagree and criticize in ways that do not undermine confidence in the professionalism and good faith of those who disagree. At the same time, the judiciary recognizes that there are exceptional cases where there may be legitimate reasons to question the good faith, honesty, and integrity of court decisions. There are unfortunate examples of judges who have not been honest, and detecting and responding to such misconduct is vital for the fair administration of justice. The council is confident, however, that this not one of those cases.
Judges sometimes use harsh language in their disagreements with each other. In criticizing the professional reasoning of colleagues, judges can too easily slide into personal attacks on the professionalism and integrity of those who disagree. Judges recognize this danger. In the overwhelming majority of cases, both on and off the bench, they adhere to standards of civility and collegiality to stay well away from personal attacks, but there are obviously some departures from those standards.
Judges should expect tough criticism of their work. The power conferred by judges’ commissions puts them in the forefront of controversy and debate. They and their work will be criticized, often publicly and sometimes harshly. The council does not mean to suggest that judges’ language and behavior should descend to the lowest and most personal level the public and profession will tolerate. But high‐profile examples, even in opinions from Supreme Court Justices, signal that in terms of imposing coercive measures of judicial discipline, the boundaries between what is permissible and what deserves discipline are not sharp. In addition, because judges may be both the targets of harsh criticisms, from within and without the judiciary, and the officials who impose discipline, judges have a responsibility to be most cautious about using that power to impose discipline for such criticism.
The vast majority of Judge Adelman’s article at issue here consists of substantive criticism of Supreme Court decisions. Those criticisms are well within the boundaries of appropriate discourse. As noted above, much of Judge Adelmanʹs critique draws from the dissenting opinions of Justices in those decisions. Without endorsing or disagreeing with Judge Adelman’s views of those cases, the council finds no ground for discipline with regard to the vast majority of the article.
More concerning, however, are the opening two sentences of the article and the criticisms of recent policy positions taken by one political party. The opening two sentences could reasonably be understood by the public as an attack on the integrity of the Chief Justice rather than disagreement with his votes and opinions in controversial cases. The attacks on Republican party positions could be interpreted, as the complainants have, as calling into question Judge Adelman’s impartiality in matters implicating partisan or ideological concerns. While not addressed by specific rules of judicial conduct, these portions of the article do not promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.
Judge Adelman’s response to the complaints shows that he appreciates that these portions of his article could be understood this way, and he has tried and remains willing to take voluntary corrective action. He tried to amend the article but was told by the publisher that it was too late to do so. Judge Adelman has offered to take corrective action by publicly acknowledging that some points in the article are worded inappropriately, disavowing any intention to criticize the integrity of the Chief Justice or any other Justices, and reaffirming his commitment to impartial administration of justice, in all cases of any type and with any parties. In addition, there is no link between the controversial article and any decisions by Judge Adelman in any particular cases.
In terms of the specific provisions of the Code of Conduct, the council finds that the article is not political activity prohibited under Canon 5. Most of the article is an example of appropriate, or at least permissible, judicial writing on law‐related subjects under Canon 4. The opening two sentences regarding the Chief Justice and the very pointed criticisms of Republican Party policy positions could be seen as inconsistent with a judge’s duty to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary and as reflecting adversely on the judge’s impartiality.
Drawing back from the particular article to look more broadly at Judge Adelman’s career, the council recognizes that he is a thoughtful and hardworking judge who has presided fairly over thousands of cases in his career. He has views on many subjects of law and policy. He also knows that his duty as a judge is to follow the law as it is. He has shown over the years that he decides cases based on the law and the facts, not personal views or inclinations. Nothing in the article or elsewhere indicates that he is not committed to following governing law, whether he personally agrees with it or not.
The Judicial Council concludes that these complaints should be resolved through a public admonition to Judge Adelman that also reminds all judges within the circuit of our obligations to ensure that judges’ public speaking and writing do not undermine public confidence in the fair administration of justice. This admonition shall be coupled with an appropriate public statement by Judge Adelman consistent with his response to the complaints, acknowledging that some language in the article went too far, disavowing any intention to suggest a lack of integrity or professionalism by any Justices on the Supreme Court, and reaffirming his commitment to impartial decision‐ making.
{The council’s resolution is consistent with the Second Circuit’s approach to more serious public comments by Judge Calabresi in 2004. Those comments were reasonably understood as opposing a candidate for president. They also compared President George W. Bush’s path to power as similar in some ways to Hitler and Mussolini’s paths to power and noted that all three had then “exercised extraordinary power.” The Second Circuit Council found a public violation of the Code’s prohibition on political activity. The complaints were resolved by a public admonition combined with the judge’s public apology. The Second Circuit’s handling of the Calabresi case met with approval of the “Breyer Committee,” which described the public comments as “serious misconduct.” The Breyer Committee noted its new standard that “corrective action should be proportionate to any plausible allegations of misconduct in the complaint,” and found the combination of the judge’s apology and the council’s formal admonition, in the form of its endorsement of the acting chief circuit judge’s earlier informal admonition, met that standard by adding “considerable moral and legal force to the reprimand.” This resolution of the complaints against Judge Adelman is also consistent with information cited by the Second Circuit in the Calabresi case indicating that such cases are generally handled through corrective action and/or an apology or acknowledgment of the error.}
Complaints like this, about judges’ non‐judicial writings, have been rare and should stay that way. There is ample room for federal judges to speak and write about the law, including criticisms of past decisions, without prompting appropriate complaints. Judges should be encouraged to do so consistent with Canon 4 for purposes of public and legal education. At the same time, it behooves all federal judicial officers to speak and write about the law with special care for their responsibilities to the public and to the larger judicial system, including refraining from personal attacks.
Judge Adelman responded:
Thank you for the thoughtful consideration that you and the committee that you appointed gave to the above complaints. I have reviewed the committee’s report and recommendation. In response, I first want to acknowledge that, as the committee notes and as I previously conveyed to you, some of the points that I made in the article about the Roberts Court were inappropriately worded. I want to express my deep regret for not being more careful. I never intended to say anything that would impair public confidence in either the judiciary or my own impartiality. As I previously wrote to you, I am strongly committed to the judiciary as an institution and deeply proud of my service as a judge.
More specifically, I apologize for any language that I used that could be construed as questioning the integrity of the Chief Justice or any other member of the Court or as expressing a bias against the Republican Party. As the committee recognizes, the issues that I wrote about are complicated and highly contested, but I did not mean for my critique of some judicial decisions to suggest personal criticism of their authors or of individuals or institutions that have embraced them.
Finally, I want to reaffirm my commitment to the impartial administration of justice in all cases regardless of the nature of the case or the identity of the parties. I have attempted to embody that commitment throughout my tenure as a judge and will continue to do so as long as I serve.
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The belated discovery of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok’s January 2017 notes raises troubling new questions about whether President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were coordinating efforts during their final days in office to investigate Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn — even as the FBI wanted to shut down the case.
Investigators will need to secure testimony from Strzok, fired two years ago from the FBI, to be certain of the exact meaning and intent of his one paragraph of notes, which were made public in court on Wednesday.
But they appear to illuminate an extraordinary high-level effort by outgoing Obama-era officials during the first weekend of January to find a way to sustain a counterintelligence investigation of Flynn in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing.
The Justice Department says the notes were written between Jan. 3-5, 2017, the very weekend the FBI agent who had investigated Flynn’s ties to Russia for five months recommended the case be closed because there was “no derogatory” evidence that he committed a crime or posed a counterintelligence threat. FBI supervisors overruled the agent’s recommendation.
Strzok’s notes appear to quote then-FBI Director James Comey as suggesting that Flynn’s intercepted calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak “appear legit,” bolstering other recently disclosed evidence showing the bureau saw nothing wrong with Flynn’s behavior.
The notes also suggest Biden — who once claimed he had no knowledge of the Flynn probe — raised the issue of the Logan Act, an obscure, centuries-old law, as a possible avenue for continuing to investigate Flynn.
And Strzok appears to quote Obama as suggesting the FBI assign “the right people” to pursue the case.
You can read the notes here:
These conversations, if accurately portrayed in the Strzok notes, occurred during the same three-day period in which FBI supervisors overruled their field agent’s recommendation to shut down the Flynn case and pivoted toward the strategy of luring Flynn into an FBI interview where he might be caught lying.
Sidney Powell, Flynn’s lawyer, laid out the potential ramifications of the notes in a court filing on Wednesday, calling the new evidence “stunning and exculpatory.”
“Mr. Obama himself directed that ‘the right people’ investigate General Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak ‘appear legit,’” Powell argued in her new motion.
“According to Strzok’s notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act. That became an admitted pretext to investigate General Flynn,” she added.
Even if the rebuked judge appeals the decision or the full appeals court reconsiders the case, Flynn is likely on a path to being a free and innocent man.
The real impact of the notes may be on the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation of the Russia investigators, where U.S. Attorneys John Durham and Jeff Jensen are determining whether the FBI or others committed crimes in deceiving the courts or Congress about the evidence in the now-discredited Russia collusion allegations.
A former senior FBI official told Just the News that Strzok’s notes about the White House meeting are a red flag that the Comey-led bureau may have been involving itself illegitimately in a political dispute between the outgoing Obama administration and incoming Trump administration.
“It was a political meeting about a policy dispute, and the bureau had no business being involved,” Former Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock said. “No other FBI director would ever have attended such a meeting.
“Comey is quoted in the notes as saying the Kislyak call appeared legit. At that point he should have gotten up and left the room,” Brock added.
“The FBI had no business being represented in that meeting. It did not have a counterintelligence interest any longer.”
A second impact of the notes could be on the campaign trail. A few months ago, Biden claimed he was unaware of the Flynn probe as he was leaving the VP’s office.
“I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” he said.
He then clarified his denial.
“I was aware that … they asked for an investigation,” Biden said.“But that’s all I know about it, and I don’t think anything else.”
If Powell’s interpretation of the notes is correct, Biden was knowledgeable enough to suggest a possible pretext for continued investigation, the Logan Act. And he eventually unmasked one of Flynn’s intercepted phone calls a week later.
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told Just the News on Wednesday the newly discovered notes affirm his long-held suspicion that the Obama White House was trying to influence the FBI’s Russia probe in untoward ways.
“Now we know both Obama and Biden were directly involved in planning the attack on Flynn,” Nunes said.
“The Obama administration exploited our intelligence community to spy on their political opponents and engineer bogus investigations and prosecutions of them.
“This is the single biggest abuse of power I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he added.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YvTKpe Tyler Durden
A Third Of Americans Have Gained Weight Due To Coronavirus, Resulting In Fat Profits For Some Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/24/2020 – 22:05
The US is already the most obese nation in the world, and thanks to the “Quarantine 15” it is about to get even fatter.
According to a new report in Obesity Research and Clinical Practice, roughly 22% of Americans (based on sample extrapolation) said they gained between five and ten pounds since the coronavirus lockdowns (“within those who gained 5–10 pounds, there was a significantly higher percentage of the total sample who reported they increased eating in response to sight and smell, eating in response to stress, and snacking after dinner compared to those who stated they did not change those behaviors at all.”) In a separate poll of more than 1,000 U.S. readers of WebMD, 34% of respondents said they’d gained weight “due to COVID restrictions.”
As Bloomberg’s Pimm Fox points out, “the reasons for the weight gain aren’t a shock: changes in diet, lack of regular exercise and a generally more sedentary lifestyle.”
The reported weight gains are confirmed by a check of what consumers are buying. In dollar terms, from Feb. 9 to May 3 frozen food sales jumped 36%, snacks gained 36%, alcohol purchases soared 34%, dairy products added 27% and packaged food rose 20%, according to data to the Chicago-based market research firm IRI.
And in a country where every trend can be monetized, investors are already making money from this latest bout of obesity: the Solactive Obesity Index is up 26% in 2020 compared with a decline of 4.7% in the S&P 500. The obesity index has even outperformed the Nasdaq.
Here is a list of the top 20 constituents of the index:
It wasn’t clear what these forward-looking investors are doing with their winnings, but buying more food is certainly among the logical options, thus closing the circle on what may prove one of the most profitable trades of 2020: betting on fat America.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2CBvRnD Tyler Durden
Can leftists and conservatives of our modern era peacefully coexist within the same society?
If someone asked me this question only ten years ago I would have said “Sure, it’s possible”.
Today, the answer is a resounding “No way”.
The political divide has become so vast that there is simply no chance for the two sides to reconcile or come to reasonable terms, and make no mistake, this is not a two-sided disaster; the majority of the damage is being done by one side of this equation.
Back in 2016 I wrote numerous articles discussing the issues and dangers of the political divide that was developing within the US, and many of these articles focused on who actually benefits. In my article ‘Order Out Of Chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost’ I stated:
“When I mentioned in my last article the crippling of social justice, I did not mention that this could have some negative reverberations. With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform. They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists. Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.
When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism. Ironically, it will be this behavior by leftists that may actually push conservatives towards a fascist model. Conservatives might decide to fight crazy with more crazy.”
The transformation I described in 2016 is now happening in 2020. The left is going full communist, with a little help of course. Currently, the Cultural Marxists are seeking to clean house within their own ranks. They are terrorizing long time Democrats and “allies” of the movement into subscribing to ALL the tenets of the new social justice religion. No deviation is allowed; all progressives must declare fealty and signal their virtue and submission or they are systematically targeted and destroyed. It is essentially coercion by cancel culture.
After this phase is over and they have organized the political left into an army of mindless drones, they will fully turn their attention to conservatives.
To be clear, social justice movements are not the primary threat, they are merely a symptom of the disease – A cancer called “globalism”. These people are being used as a weapon of expediency, nothing more. There is an open and admitted organized effort on the part of a tiny minority of power brokers and money elites in our society that seek to manipulate the public into accepting the notion of total centralization and the end of personal liberty and national sovereignty in the name of an arbitrary “greater good”. This is not “conspiracy theory”, this is conspiracy fact.
As Richard N. Gardner, former deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations under Kennedy and Johnson, and a member of the Trilateral Commission, wrote in the April, 1974 issue of the Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs (pg. 558) in an article titled ‘Hard Road To World Order’:
“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”
It is my view, according to the evidence, that the social justice left is a cultivated threat, a product of the gatekeepers of Cultural Marxism that has been gestated over decades to the stage we now see today – a mass movement of useful idiots, insane narcissists and sociopaths obsessed with identity politics and the destruction of the “old world”.
It was globalist institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation that funded different elements of the feminist movement and “gender studies” movements from the late 1960’s onward. This included the Rockefeller Foundation’s large donations to ‘The Feminist Press’ and the Ford Foundation’s programs to indoctrinate teachers into injecting social justice talking points into their curriculum. This is openly admitted in Alison R. Bernstein’s book ‘Funding The Future: Philanthropy’s Influence On America’s Higher Education’. Bernstein is the vice president of Education at the Ford Foundation and the former Associate Dean of Faculty at Princeton.
That’s right folks, social justice activism was paid for and encouraged by the so-called “patriarchy”. This is the reality, and it never stopped. Even today SJW groups are funded by globalists.
For example, as the mainstream media often tries to dismiss or ignore, Black Lives Matter was initially funded by the Ford Foundation and George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. BLM coffers were flooded with over $100 million from uber rich white elites. Again, this is a FACT that even the dishonest spin doctors at Snopes were not able to deny. Instead, they attempt to use strawman arguments and sophistry to distract from the implication of extreme-left mobs receiving seed money from elitist billionaires.
As noted, the political left is being weaponized, but to what end? To understand the end game we have to understand the concept of the Hegelian Dialectic and “problem – reaction – solution”.
If there is one behavior that stands out above all others as a defining trait of the social justice left, in my opinion it is their obsession with exploiting tragedy and crisis for their own personal and political gain. The George Floyd incident, a terrible event to be sure, should have been held up as a prime example of police abuse, yet it was immediately twisted by BLM into an issue of “systemic racism”. There is no proof of systemic racism. There’s not even any proof that George Floyd was killed because he was black.
Police abuse is something which concerns every American equally, not just black Americans. But the BLM has obscured the real issue of police accountability and made it about the delusion of “white supremacy” and an attack on basically every element of American heritage and tradition. This will alienate millions of Americans who would have otherwise agreed to certain points and arguments. The narrative was hijacked by the political left and they reveled in the death of George Floyd as a means to push numerous unrelated agendas forward as quickly as possible.
These agendas include a vast array of censorship in social media and the firestorm of cancel culture, threatening anyone who does not agree with the prevailing leftist narrative. People are losing their platforms, their jobs, and their reputations are being dragged through the mud, and the mainstream media is helping to make this happen.
Now, as a true conservative, I respect the boundaries of private property, and to be sure, a website is indeed private property. A social media company has the right to remove people and content they don’t like, just as any person has the right to remove someone they don’t like from their home. That said, there are some exceptions to this.
For example, when a company has a monopoly over a certain means of communication, then censorship becomes a legal and moral problem and that company must be either limited or broken up. Monopolies are not natural functions of a free market, they are attempts by elites to subvert free markets. Corporations in general receive their charters from government, along with the protections of limited liability and corporate personhood. They are not a natural part of the economy, they are aberrations created by government. They are children of socialism, not “capitalism”.
If we are to solve the current problem in the long term, corporations must either be regulated or abolished and replaced with classical limited partnerships. Joint stock companies, as corporation used to be called, were never intended to become permanent power structures within free market societies, and now we are witnessing why.
That said, the danger of monopolies does not only extend to corporations. There can also be such a thing as a political or ideological monopoly as well. When a particular minority of ideologues take over a vast majority of mass communication outlets and actively seeks to squeeze out any dissenting voices so that only one point of view is presented to the public, what else do we call this but a monopoly?
I see where the cancel culture is going and it is quickly going to a very ugly place. While google’s removal of ad revenue from conservative websites like Zero Hedge is a legal grey area, the attacks will eventually go far beyond monetization. One day soon, I predict there will be an attempt to influence website host providers to remove “offending” sites altogether. One might argue that handing government the power to nationalize the internet would help to protect free speech, but I doubt that. Government is run by the same ghouls that are funding the social justice cult. Why should we trust them to police the web fairly?
The political left is not only asserting control over speech on the web, but also pushing restrictions in major population centers (to be fair, Trump and his cabinet of elites including Anthony Fauci are also culpable in encouraging medical tyranny). If you lived in a major US city during the first pandemic lockdowns, then you have seen the extreme lengths politicians, mostly on the left, will go to to assert dominance.
Why are Americans in these cities being admonished from even going outside? You do know that viruses are far less communicable in open areas than indoors, right? No one catches a virus from jogging through a park or walking on a beach. Such rules seem like they stem from a severe ignorance of how viruses survive and function, but it’s not ignorance; it’s deliberate. These draconian rules are not about saving lives, they are about control, and many conservatives are fed up with it.
Add to this the fact that city governments like Seattle are actively encouraging civil unrest and rioting by Antifa and BLM, and something has to give.
The insanity of the left is triggering a balkanization of the US, but I’m not so sure this is a bad thing.
It is clear that SJWs cannot live with or get along with anyone who respects liberty or logic. They are a destructive force in society and they have no comprehension of the non-aggression principle. They believe that they have the right to enforce their ideology and beliefs on others. They infest every aspect of our culture with the sole intent of destroying what we have previously built so that our history can be erased and replaced. It is only natural that reasonable and free-thinking people would want to get as far away from them as possible.
There has been much talk in the mainstream lately about the growing exodus from major cities into suburban and rural areas is due to the pandemic. I disagree. In my own state of Montana, there has been a surge of new residents buying properties, and the word is the majority of them are conservatives trying to find like-minded people. They are trying to escape from the madness of the political left, they are not only concerned about the pandemic.
A great migration is coming, and it will be from leftist stronghold states like California, New York, Illinois, etc., as well as from major cities. People are going to seek out and move to places where their ideals and principles are respected or protected. There has not been a division like this in the US since perhaps the Civil War.
I’m not sure it’s avoidable, and even if it was I’m not sure it should be avoided. There is something to be said for conservatives and leftists balancing each other out in a community, but when one side becomes aggressive while also being protected, we have limited options. Conservatives are the primary pillar of support propping up these otherwise broken states and communities. Perhaps it’s time for producers and liberty advocates to seek out greener pastures and go where they are appreciated? And maybe it’s time for progressives and socialists in America to finally stand on their own and be allowed to fail.
The global elites have a different scenario in mind, I think. They certainly want a civil war, but one that they can mold and control on both sides. They are using the left to strike fear into the minds of conservatives and they want us to demand government action as the solution. They want us to push the button on the Insurrection Act and to demand martial law. If we separate and establish conservative strongholds then the temptation to beg for government help will be diminished.
There will be numerous arguments made against this strategy – They will say the cities and high population states are economically essential and leaving will be financially disastrous for individuals. But, if producers are leaving in droves, then they can build an economy anywhere they please. It’s the leftists that need conservatives to feed off of their labor and production; conservatives don’t need leftists for anything. There will be others that claim that when we leave blue states and counties we are abandoning the fight and leaving those places to be completely taken over. I disagree with this mentality. By leaving and forming conservative communities and economies and businesses we are changing the landscape of the conflict. Instead of constantly contending with political obstruction we will be free to actually build something lasting.
This is what the establishment is afraid of; they do not want conservatives to become proactive. They want us to hide in our homes in fear and apathy waiting for someone else to save the day.
I realize that there is such a thing as the false left/right paradigm, but this paradigm applies to politicians and government. Politicians are only loyal to the establishment power structure, and that structure desires tyranny. Common people have differing social and political viewpoints, and this is natural. One would hope that ALL Americans regardless of their beliefs would still have a respect for the fundamentals of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. But when one side or the other becomes openly hostile to those principles and values of freedom, then they become my enemy and the enemy of any liberty minded person. We cannot live together, so, we must live apart. Otherwise, we will have to go to war until one side is removed from the equation.
* * *
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On V-Day, Russia Vows To Prevent US-Led ‘Regime Change’ In Venezuela Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/24/2020 – 21:25
On Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov used the occasion of Moscow’s 75th anniversary V-Day parade commemorating the end of WWII to warn Washington against pushing regime change in Venezuela.
Among other foreign dignitaries, Caracas’ top diplomat Jorge Arreaza was in Moscow for the events. Lavrov issued public statements of solidarity expressing support to the socialist country, calling it “a mainstay for countering the attempts to draw the region back into the 19th century and to impose the Monroe Doctrine.”
“We strongly support your commitment to combating foreign diktat and any attempts at blatant interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state, opposing any attempts at a forced regime change,” Lavrov said, as reported in Newsweek.
Image: Venezuelan Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs/Newsweek
Given that only within the last year-and-a-half of multiple failed coup attempts backed by Washington, which saw ‘opposition’ military officers attempt to stir popular revolt, and more recently the bizarre small ‘invasion’ attempt by a group of ex-Green Berets turned security contractors, two of which were attempting to enter the country on small boats, Lavrov’s reference to attempts at regime change aren’t mere inflated accusations.
Lavrov further underscored in his Wednesday comments that Maduro and Venezuela are a “reliable friend” of Russia, and praised that “bilateral relations are progressing in such spheres as energy, industry, agriculture, high technology, pharmaceutics and military-technical cooperation.”
Image via Xinhua: Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to troops after the Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, Russia on June 24, 2020.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry responded by emphasizing “strengthened the ties of brotherhood and cooperation,” in a statement.
The Russian-Venezuelan expression of solidarity also appear aimed at the US heightened naval presence in the Caribbean, also following a series of Iranian fuel tanker deliveries to Maduro’s Venezuela.
V-day celebrations took place on June 24, instead of May 9, due to coronavirus concerns:
Via Reuters
This week the US has warships patrolling near Venezuela’s coast conducting what US Southern Command calls “freedom of navigation” operations.
“Today, while peacefully operating in the Caribbean Sea, the U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Nitze (DDG 94) conducted a freedom of navigation operation, contesting an excessive maritime claim by Venezuela,” the US military said Tuesday.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/37Zp6rm Tyler Durden
