Month: September 2020

Yale Prof Calls Trump’s COVID Plan, “A Lazy Man’s Ethnic Cleansing”

Yale Prof Calls Trump’s COVID Plan, “A Lazy Man’s Ethnic Cleansing”

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 15:32

Authored by Taylor Hunt via Campus Reform,

A professor at Yale University made the claim that “#TrumpKilledAmericans” and that coronavirus is a “lazy man’s ethnic cleansing.”

Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor, took to Twitter in early September to claim that COVID-19 is a “lazy man’s” ethnic cleansing.

In the Twitter thread, Snyder first tweeted, “Coronavirus in America: A lazy man’s ethnic cleansing #OurMalady #TrumpGenocide #TrumpLiedPeopleDied #TrumpKilledAmericans Kushner’s team: “because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically.”

Snyder linked  to an article by Kathrine Eban of Vanity Fair, titled “How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan ‘Went Poof Into Thin Air.'” 

The article claims the reason Trump did not roll out a national testing plan is that “more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity.”

The Twitter thread continued with Snyder claiming, “Coronavirus in America: A lazy man’s ethnic cleansing. #OurMalady #TrumpGenocide #TrumpLiedPeopleDied #TrumpKilledAmericans “Senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among ‘our people.'”

He then went on to tweet “Coronavirus in America: A lazy man’s ethnic cleansing. #OurMalady #TrumpGenocide #TrumpLiedPeopleDied #TrumpKilledAmericans “Trump Admits Minimizing the Virus””

The last article he shared in the thread was written by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, entitled “Trump Admits Downplaying the Virus Knowing It Was ‘Deadly Stuff.’” The article claims that Trump “made a conscious choice not only to mislead the public but also to actively pressure governors to reopen states before his own government guidelines said they were ready.”

The final tweet of the thread read the same as his first: “Coronavirus in America: A lazy man’s ethnic cleansing. #OurMalady #TrumpGenocide #TrumpLiedPeopleDied #TrumpKilledAmericans.”

Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University. He studied at Oxford University where he received his doctorate. He has published multiple books and has appeared in multiple publications and media outlets. He has received the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Emerson Prize in the Humanities, and the Foundation for Polish Science Prize in the social sciences.

Campus Reform reached out to Snyder and Yale but did not receive a response in time for publication. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36k9j7L Tyler Durden

Don’t Shame Pregnant Women for Drinking Coffee

dreamstime_xxl_81952543

Women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should completely avoid caffeine, according to a study published in The BMJ, a British medical journal.

Its findings, though, were quickly picked apart by skeptics who are sick of women being warned that almost everything they do—other than sip wheat grass smoothies—is a risk to their kids.

“I don’t think we need to worry about coffee,” says Clare Murphy, a spokesperson for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. “I think we need to worry about this relentless pursuit of pregnant women and regulating of pregnant women’s choices.”

Murphy is the top signatory of a letter signed by about 20 professors and public health advocates objecting to the paper, which is actually a meta-analysis of several earlier studies relating caffeine and pregnancy. The analysis was conducted by James E. Jack, a professor of psychology at Reykjavik University whose life’s work seems to be excoriating caffeine. Consider his full-length book on the topic (his second): Understanding Caffeine, which concludes that “current scientific evidence indicates there is no safe level of regular use,” according to its description on Amazon.com.

He’s not a Starbucks kind of guy, in other words.

His BMJ piece looked at 48 studies out of 1261 on the subject. Of those 48, Jack reports, the majority found no safe level of caffeine for pregnant women. (Though about a fourth of them found caffeine had zero effect.) He blames caffeine for “tens of thousands of avoidable negative pregnancy outcomes per year in the USA alone.”

That is quite a claim. But as Joan Wolf, a professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Texas A&M, points out, “You can cherry pick 48 studies on a topic and get that study to tell you anything you want it to tell you. This was so clearly written by someone who has an axe to grind. It stunned me that this even got through.”

Wolf has spent much of her professional career tilting against research that seems bent on telling moms they must be ever more vigilant and selfless, and is the author of the book, Is Breast Best? Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood.

The problem is that in a culture enamored of shame and blame, especially when it comes to moms, it is this kind of research that gets funding and attention.

“Often the media are blamed for sensationalist headlines,” says Murphy.  “But if you trace it back, the scientists themselves are writing studies and conclusions that [they know] will get into the paper. And the whole issue of pregnant women’s behavior is a very rich area for this kind of material.”

It’s also a very rich area for proposed regulation. Murphy says that her country’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently published guidelines “whereby they want a woman’s entire alcohol history through the entire pregnancy—from a glass of beer they had before they knew they were pregnant—to be all documented and transferred onto a child’s health record.”

The clear implication is that anything a mom does can and will be held against her if a child exhibits problems.

For women, this kind of blame is horrible.

“I had miscarriage after miscarriage,” says Nancy McDermott, author of the new book, The Problem with Parenting: How Raising Children is Changing Across America. Thanks to science, she says, “We found out what it was. It had nothing to do with caffeine. But when you’re in that position, you’re paranoid. I blamed myself because I carried the groceries home. I was sure that’s why I had a miscarriage.” Actually, she found out, it was because of a certain kind of blood clotting. (She is now the mother of two kids.)

But most women who miscarry will never learn why it happened, leaving ample opportunity for self-flagellation.

“The idea that you can control every aspect of your life or your children’s life is part of a much broader dynamic that has all of us monitoring and surveilling ourselves all the time,” says Wolf.

It may have a lot of others—doctors, health officials, barristas—monitoring and surveilling us, too.

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Don’t Shame Pregnant Women for Drinking Coffee

dreamstime_xxl_81952543

Women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should completely avoid caffeine, according to a study published in The BMJ, a British medical journal.

Its findings, though, were quickly picked apart by skeptics who are sick of women being warned that almost everything they do—other than sip wheat grass smoothies—is a risk to their kids.

“I don’t think we need to worry about coffee,” says Clare Murphy, a spokesperson for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. “I think we need to worry about this relentless pursuit of pregnant women and regulating of pregnant women’s choices.”

Murphy is the top signatory of a letter signed by about 20 professors and public health advocates objecting to the paper, which is actually a meta-analysis of several earlier studies relating caffeine and pregnancy. The analysis was conducted by James E. Jack, a professor of psychology at Reykjavik University whose life’s work seems to be excoriating caffeine. Consider his full-length book on the topic (his second): Understanding Caffeine, which concludes that “current scientific evidence indicates there is no safe level of regular use,” according to its description on Amazon.com.

He’s not a Starbucks kind of guy, in other words.

His BMJ piece looked at 48 studies out of 1261 on the subject. Of those 48, Jack reports, the majority found no safe level of caffeine for pregnant women. (Though about a fourth of them found caffeine had zero effect.) He blames caffeine for “tens of thousands of avoidable negative pregnancy outcomes per year in the USA alone.”

That is quite a claim. But as Joan Wolf, a professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Texas A&M, points out, “You can cherry pick 48 studies on a topic and get that study to tell you anything you want it to tell you. This was so clearly written by someone who has an axe to grind. It stunned me that this even got through.”

Wolf has spent much of her professional career tilting against research that seems bent on telling moms they must be ever more vigilant and selfless, and is the author of the book, Is Breast Best? Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood.

The problem is that in a culture enamored of shame and blame, especially when it comes to moms, it is this kind of research that gets funding and attention.

“Often the media are blamed for sensationalist headlines,” says Murphy.  “But if you trace it back, the scientists themselves are writing studies and conclusions that [they know] will get into the paper. And the whole issue of pregnant women’s behavior is a very rich area for this kind of material.”

It’s also a very rich area for proposed regulation. Murphy says that her country’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently published guidelines “whereby they want a woman’s entire alcohol history through the entire pregnancy—from a glass of beer they had before they knew they were pregnant—to be all documented and transferred onto a child’s health record.”

The clear implication is that anything a mom does can and will be held against her if a child exhibits problems.

For women, this kind of blame is horrible.

“I had miscarriage after miscarriage,” says Nancy McDermott, author of the new book, The Problem with Parenting: How Raising Children is Changing Across America. Thanks to science, she says, “We found out what it was. It had nothing to do with caffeine. But when you’re in that position, you’re paranoid. I blamed myself because I carried the groceries home. I was sure that’s why I had a miscarriage.” Actually, she found out, it was because of a certain kind of blood clotting. (She is now the mother of two kids.)

But most women who miscarry will never learn why it happened, leaving ample opportunity for self-flagellation.

“The idea that you can control every aspect of your life or your children’s life is part of a much broader dynamic that has all of us monitoring and surveilling ourselves all the time,” says Wolf.

It may have a lot of others—doctors, health officials, barristas—monitoring and surveilling us, too.

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Suspect Arrested In Ambush Shooting Of LA Cops

Suspect Arrested In Ambush Shooting Of LA Cops

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 15:16

A man from Compton, California has been arrested and charged in the shooting of two Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputies in a September 12 ambush, according to a Wednesday announcement by authorities.

36-year-old Deonte Lee Murray will be arraigned Wednesday afternoon on two counts each of willful, deliberate and premeditated attempted murder of a peace officer as well as possession of a firearm by a felon, according to District Attorney Jackie Lacey.

“They became victims of a violent crime for one reason: They were doing their job and they were wearing a badge,” said Lacey.

Murray’s bail was recommended at $6.15 million. He faces life in prison if convicted on all charges.

Video footage shows a man, suspected to be Murray, approaching a parked patrol car at a Compton transit station and fire a pistol into the passenger side of the car before running away.

Both deputies received serious head wounds, but both survived and have been discharged from the hospital. The deputies, who have not been identified by name, were described as a 31-year-old female officer who is a mother and a 24-year-old man, police said. -Reuters

“We knew that he was a violent offender, was accused of stealing a black Mercedes-Benz and lived in the area. However, there was insufficient evidence to support an arrest, much less a criminal filing for the charge of attempted murder on a peace officer and to label him in the media as the person responsible,” said the sheriff’s homicide captain, Kent Wegener. “Additionally, bringing the public focus on him at that point of the investigation may have influenced the pending witness interviews and further compromised the mission of solving the attempted murder of the deputies.”

“As the investigation progressed, we gathered sufficient evidence to substantiate not only the arrest but the filing of criminal charges in this case.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33hJKCh Tyler Durden

Kentucky AG Asks For 1-Week Delay Before Releasing Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Footage

Kentucky AG Asks For 1-Week Delay Before Releasing Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Footage

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 15:00

In a last-minute delay that has infuriated Democrats and leaders of BLM, Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron has asked for another week before his office releases footage from the grand jury proceedings in the case that led to the indictment of one of the officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Louisville health-care worker who was shot and killed in her sleep during a “no knock” warrant raid gone awry.

Yesterday, Cameron pledged to comply with an order from a judge calling for the release of the footage by noon Wednesday. Releasing materials from grand jury proceedings is an unusual move, but a member of the grand jury has spoken out claiming that Cameron never presented murder charges as an option during the proceedings. That would contradict what Cameron said during a public briefing announcing the decision, where he claimed the grand jury had been walked through every scenario. Cameron alter acknowledged that he didn’t recommend murder charges, in keeping with his prosecutorial discretion.

The fact that the other officers involved were let off without being charged, and only one of the offiers involved, former Louisville Metro Police detective Brett Hankison, was charged. And even then, he faced a charge of wanton endangerment for firing into a neighbor’s apartment, eliciting BLM activists to claim that “Breonna Taylor’s neighbors’ walls got justice before her”.

Still, the AG’s office filed a motion asking a court in Louisville for a one-week delay to allow the names of witnesses and their personal information, including addresses and phone numbers, to be redacted, a standard procedure that will almost certainly be granted. The materials have yet to be released by Cameron’s office. A judge is expected to rule shortly. Cameron’s office argued the delay is necessary “in the interest of protection of witnesses, and in particular private citizens named in the recordings.”

Cameron’s involvement could have political ramifications for the broader US as Mitch McConnell’s Democratic opponent Amy McGrath seeks to seize on the controversy. Cameron is one of McConnell’s “proteges”, according to media reports, and a rumored successor once the Republican majority leader is finally ready to retire. Cameron is also Kentucky’s first black AG. He says he didn’t recommend charges against the other officers because Taylor’s boyfriend fired first, which justifies their response.

Officers Jonathan Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Taylor’s boyfriend, and Myles Cosgrove, who is believed to have fired the fatal shot, are still on the force.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ij88Ib Tyler Durden

The Problem With California’s Electric Dream

The Problem With California’s Electric Dream

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 14:45

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom last week announced that the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines would be banned from 2035 in the state administration’s latest effort to reduce its carbon footprint. The move was praised by environmentalists and carmakers alike – the latter already having committed billions to build an EV presence.  But there is one problem the Golden State might want to fix by 2035 if the ban is to work: its power supply.

Last month, California was threatened by the first rolling blackouts in about two decades as a heatwave led to a spike in electricity consumption. This, in turn, revealed that the state’s demand exceeded its supply – including imported electricity – and ignited a debate about whether it had grown its renewable energy generation capacity too aggressively for its own good.

The debate is important if California plans on letting millions of EVs on its roads in less than two decades. These EVs will add to the demand for electricity, and there is no guarantee whatsoever they would need this electricity in off-peak hours. In the meantime, California will continue expanding its renewable capacity but likely not gas capacity. According to some, this could be a problem because gas provides an essential baseload when solar and wind can’t supply power to the grid. Others, however, have brushed off these concerns.

The president of the California Independent System Operator, the state grid’s manager, recently told the Los Angeles Times in an interview that the problem was more complex than some made it out to be. A shortage of imports and mostly the fact that California’s grid operates “too close to the margin” were at the heart of the outages.

“We knew coming into the day on Friday that we were going to be tight, but that’s not unusual,” Stephen Berberich told the LA Times.

“We’re often tight. And imports generally take care of the gap. In this case, because it was hot in the West, we weren’t able to get the imports we would normally get. Renewables are not at the heart of the issues we had on Friday night.”

Yet renewables do bear improvement in the form of batteries, which, according to Berberich, could help with the load problem. However, they won’t solve it on their own. Solar, he noted, is not available 24/7. In fact, “Solar has virtually no value in the net peak hours, in the evening.” This intermittency has plagued solar – and, perhaps to a lesser extent, wind – for years. Batteries are getting bigger and better, but they have a long way to go before they can completely replace power plants with a constant supply of fuel.

In other words, the California grid is quite vulnerable to outages, especially during the summer season. This summer, when authorities asked Californians to conserve energy to prevent blackouts, they did. But can the authorities prescribe EV charging times to alleviate the load on the grid? This will hardly work with millions of people.

Electricity demand in California could jump by 25 percent if all passenger vehicles on its roads are electric, the Wall Street Journal’s Russell Gold wrote last week, citing calculations done by experts. This is a major demand increase even if it is hypothetical: California will not be banning existing ICE cars from the road, only new sales. Sales of used ICE cars will also be allowed after 2035. But the goal is clear enough: make EVs the dominant mode of transportation. And this will cost the grid.

There has been an idea to use EVs to actually supply power to the grid when needed, but it has been fraught with problems that, for now, make it impractical. That’s all right because the millions of EVs that the idea envisages as grid supporters have yet to hit the road. For now, the only other idea about how to cope with the situation is adapting the grid to the higher demand: upgrading the transmission and distribution equipment to handle the stronger demand from households, since most EVs are charged at home.

One utility, the WSJ’s Gold reported, has also suggested incentivizing people to charge their cars during off-peak hours to avoid overloading the grid. For now, the best time to do this seems to be the middle of the day. Trying to make millions of people charge their EVs during the middle of the day could be challenging despite any incentives utilities might think of. And in case it does work, the additional EVs would just turn into another peak demand period, potentially threatening more outages in its own right since most drivers would want to fast-charge their EVs if they would be charging them at noon instead of at night, at home.

Reconciling California’s grid vulnerability with its EV ambitions will require a lot of work—work that needs to get underway now. Currently, EVs comprise just a tenth of California’s car demand. This may change by 2035, and with the proper incentives, it probably will. So, the grid needs to be prepared for the surge in EVs that would need charging because the heatwaves during the summer are unlikely to go away.

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Stocks Slide After McConnell Says “Very, Very Far Apart” On Stimulus Bill

Stocks Slide After McConnell Says “Very, Very Far Apart” On Stimulus Bill

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 14:40

Update: It looks like the Mnuchin-Pelosi meeting is also over, and was a dud:

  • *MNUCHIN HAS LEFT PELOSI OFFICE
  • *MNUCHIN IS NOW WITH MCCONNELL

* * *

In a day where stocks soared higher, reversing the overnight post-debate drop, following conciliatory comments from White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, moments ago Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell poured cold water on the rally saying the Senate and House are “very, very far apart” on stimulus talks, making it clear the Senate would not come up to $2.2 trillion after earlier saying the Democrats had a poison pill in the bill likely referring to the nearly $500 billion in state and local stimulus which has been a non-starter for Senate republicans.

The negative response in stocks was immediate.

The reversal comes following some optimism earlier when Mark Meadows had said there has been “substantial movement from both sides” on the stimulus bill, noting that  “I dont know that today has to be the drop dead deadline but, there are enough numbers and facts to have to discuss that hopefully it makes for a more meaningful conversation.”

Earlier in the day, Politico reported that House Democrats are pressing ahead with their own new coronavirus aid package — without GOP support — as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House make a last-gasp attempt to strike a deal before the election.

Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met in the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, their first in-person sitdown in weeks after days of calls, under immense pressure to reach a bipartisan agreement that extends a financial lifeline to tens of millions of increasingly desperate Americans.

But Pelosi and her top Democrats said on a private call Wednesday morning that the House could vote as soon as that afternoon on their own $2.2 trillion package, if the two sides remain too apart from a deal. The biggest sticking points, Pelosi said, were still state and local aid and liability protections for businesses and workers impacted by the coronavirus.

Walking into Pelosi’s office, Mnuchin wouldn’t speculate on the chances of a deal after weeks of stalled talks.

“I don’t know we’ll see,” he told reporters. “Going to see the speaker, see if we can make some good progress today.”

Of course, even if the House passes the bill, it is dead in the Senate without McConnell’s blessing. And so the fingerpointing between Democrats and Republicans over who is responsible for the lack of a much needed 5th stimulus bill, begin anew.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36oRB2X Tyler Durden

Democratic Sweep Will Unleash New $7 Trillion Fiscal Stimulus

Democratic Sweep Will Unleash New $7 Trillion Fiscal Stimulus

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 14:38

Earlier today, former Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein sent out a snarky tweet in which the Democrat and prominent Hillary Clinton supporter mused on the reasons behind today’s market ramp (which as recently as 11pm last night was a sharp drop, because as Bloomberg reported just before midnight, “S&P Futures Slip as Biden Election Odds Firm” which begs the question: are Trump’s election odds rising now alongside stocks) saying “so far the stock market doesn’t seem too upset at the prospect of Biden winning, despite Trump’s more market friendly policies. Perhaps folks think their stocks and 401(k)s will do better with higher taxes and increased regulation than with nastiness and scorched earth.”

Blankfein’s trolling aside, what the ex-Goldman CEO forgot to mention is that just yesterday his former bank Goldman Sachs published a report in which it completely reversed itself on its warnings of a Biden victory which as early as a few months ago it said was market negative, and now claims that “a Democratic sweep could have a modestly positive net impact on the trajectory of S&P 500 profits.”

As a reminder, Biden has proposed lifting the domestic corporate statutory tax rate to 28% from 21%, reversing half of the Trump cuts, as well as implementing a number of other tax changes including an increased tax on global, low-tax, intangible (“GILTI”) income.

As Goldman’s David Kostin elaborates, “our earnings forecast depends on the specific sequencing and size assumptions made regarding corporate tax reform and fiscal stimulus. By 2024, we model just a 4% difference between our baseline EPS forecast ($214), which assumes no change in policy, and the potential earnings outlook under policies expected to be enacted in the event of a Democratic sweep ($222). In contrast, most market participants believe a blue wave election would have major downward ramifications for earnings.”

Kostin also claims that “the immediate impact of the election outcome on equity valuation multiples will depend on both the reaction of the interest rate market and investor risk sentiment.” It gets better: so desperate is Goldman to spin a Biden victory in a market-positive that it claims the mere fact the election is over should be bullish in itsef, to wit:

“To some extent, regardless of the outcome, the resolution of a highly uncertain election should help reduce the equity risk premium and support equity valuations.“

As with every other self-serving Goldman reco, most of the above is pablum. Even Kostin admits that the Biden corporate tax plan would arithmetically reduce S&P 500 earnings by roughly 9%, “excluding any potential second-order impact from economic growth, business confidence, or other factors.” This compares with a 10% boost to S&P 500 EPS following the TCJA.

Needless to say, the hit to after tax net income would be tremendous, impairing both EPS and multiples, so for Goldman to claim that a Biden sweep would have only a modest impact, all else equal, is naive. Yet Goldman repeats its mid-2021 price target of 3800 which using the bank’s baseline 2022 EPS of $171, means a PE multiple more than 22x. Or, as Kostin would probably call it “cheap.”

We are, of course, joking and many immediately took Goldman to task for its latest forecast, which was basically goalseeked to convince traders that no matter who wins – Trump or Biden – stocks will still go up. As the Bear Traps report wrote this morning, “We disagree… Higher corporate taxes, regulation add-ons, China supply chain shift does not stop with Biden, etc…”

And yet, there is one scenario where Goldman’s projections could make some sense: that would be if the Biden tax hikes were accompanied by a new fiscal stimulus wave, one not prompted by another global cataclysm such as a covid pandemic.

It is this massive fiscal stimulus bombshell that Goldman assumes. As Kostin writes, “our political economists outline roughly $7 trillion in gross fiscal expansion spread out over several years that Biden has proposed, including roughly $2 trillion of front-loaded COVID-related stimulus as well as spending on infrastructure, healthcare, and other policies.“

It is only when this stimulus supernova, which will send US debt soaring even more, is factored in that Goldman’s forecast of a market rise under Biden makes sense:

Our economists use the Fed’s FRB/US model to simulate the economic impact of both the policies proposed by the Biden campaign and the more modest set of policies they believe would be implemented by a potential Biden administration. FRB/US translates these expansionary polices into a large increase in the output gap, defined as actual minus potential GDP. This potential boost would add to their already above-consensus outlook for the US economy as it recovers from the pandemic recession.

What follows next is a convoluted goalseeking of how and why this fiscal stimulus flood would push stocks higher:

Although government spending would rise by more than tax revenue, from an earnings perspective the impact of tax reform would likely outweigh the impact of fiscal expansion. Taxes are deducted from profits, while fiscal spending and economic activity boost revenues. Based on our top-down S&P 500 macro earnings model, the economic effects of the Biden policy agenda would likely add a few percentage points to S&P 500 earnings growth in 2021 and 2022, depending on the magnitude of policies implemented.

And the punchline: the $7 trillion fiscal boost to markets is exhausted some time in 2023 at which point even more will be needed to keep stocks rising.

In 2023, however, the impulse becomes negative as the economy grows more slowly than would be the case absent the additional economic acceleration in the first half of the Biden administration.

And considering that toal US debt is now just under $27 trillion, and that every $1 in deficit monetization equates to about $1.50 in new debt, by 2023 total US debt should be around $40 trillion, while US GDP – thanks to the covid pandemic – will barely be above the 2019 levels.

In short, Goldman may be right, and a Biden sweep could be good for markets for the next 2 years – even with a 7% increase in corporate tax rates – but some time in 2023 the wheel on the US fiscal bus will really fall off at which point the US becomes fully Japanified, and only full-blown helicopter money coupled with direct “digital dollar” deposits by the Fed into US household accounts, would allow the US to reach the end of the Biden administration in 2024 without total collapse in the process.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3jgzUWU Tyler Durden

Last Night’s Debate Was a Disaster. That’s Exactly Why There Should Be More of Them.

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The first debate between President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden was, for the most part, an unwatchable disaster.

We should have more debates between these two men. A lot more.

In the rare moments on Tuesday night when Trump and Biden weren’t talking over each other or engaging in shouting matches with the debate’s moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, they struggled to move behind the most basic of talking points before quickly returning to the shouting, mocking, and general nonsense. Trump was, of course, the more disruptive of the two—but both candidates deserve blame for wasting 90 minutes of everyone’s time.

“A hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck,” is how CNN’s Jake Tapper described it shortly after the event mercifully concluded. His colleague Wolf Blitzer actually opened CNN’s post-debate coverage by openly speculating about whether this might have been both the first and last debate between the two men—and he wasn’t the only one to express that sentiment:

Anyone who watched Tuesday’s debate with the knowledge that two more Trump vs. Biden contests are scheduled—for October 15 and October 22—can be forgiven for wishing that this cup might pass from us. I mean, can you really imagine sitting through three more hours of that.

But what America really needs is the exact opposite.

Yes, I’m saying there should be more debates. Maybe two or three per week between now and the election. Seriously. The debates shouldn’t be seen as horrifying divertissements from more sanitized campaign trail news, and they certainly shouldn’t be canceled because they show Trump and Biden in such a raw, unfiltered light. This is the choice we have, America, and we should not look away.

There should be more debates because the two major parties that vomited up these candidates into your living room deserve to be humiliated. Take away the pundits, surrogates, and teams of public relations professionals who help sell Trump and Biden as normal, competent adults capable of holding any position of power, and you’re left with what you saw on Tuesday night.

There should be more debates because Americans should have to stew in this porridge of hot garbage until they cry out for alternatives—alternatives that are kept off the stage by rigged qualification rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is itself a creation of the two major parties. (After watching Tuesday’s display, you can at least understand why Democrats and Republicans are so keen on excluding anyone who might be even moderately coherent.)

There should be more debates because Americans need to confront the fact that Trump and Biden didn’t merely have an “off night” on Tuesday. Their performances were every bit as calculated and cynical as they were unserious and exhausting. They were, believe it or not, trying their best.

Trump lacks coherent policy ideas or anything that could reasonably be called a second-term agenda. Midway through the debate, Wallace lobbed a softball that invited Trump to talk about what he would do to help the average American if given another four years in office, and Trump sputtered a bunch of nonsense about what he’d supposedly accomplished so far—as if voters owe him a second term based on his first.

Lacking any serious ideas of his own, it was clear from the start that Trump’s strategy in the debate was nothing more sophisticated than trying to bully Biden into saying something that could be replayed, context-free, on Fox News and the president’s own Twitter account.

Biden, whose best quality during this whole campaign has been that he’s not Trump, kept his cool but accomplished little else. Honestly, I don’t remember a word Biden said last night except for the time he told Trump “would you shut up, man.” Which, fair.

So much for trying to figure out which candidate you’d rather have a beer with. Last night’s debate posed a darker question: if you were locked in a bar with both candidates and a pistol with a single round, would you take the easy way out?

Guess what, America: There is no easy way out. Either Trump or Biden will be president for the next four years. We collectively stared into that abyss for 90 minutes on Tuesday night, and the only ones among us who weren’t driven mad by the experience were those who are already insane.

There should be more debates for roughly the same reason that we should abolish tax withholding. Though originally a well-intentioned idea pushed by none other than Milton Friedman, having taxes automatically withheld from paychecks means that most Americans don’t experience the reality of paying roughly one-third of what they earn to the federal government every year. If we could only force people to write massive checks to the IRS every year, the theory goes, more people would feel differently about proposals to increase the size and cost of government. Likewise, if only we had more presidential debates, perhaps we could awaken more of America to the ruinous consequences of having only two viable political parties in a country of 325 million people.

Every time Biden and Trump speak, they undermine the rotting system that put them in front of the cameras, so they should be invited to speak, literally ad nauseum, until we can’t take it anymore.

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Here’s Where Marijuana Is on the Ballot in November

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Congress appears to be wimping out on the prospect of decriminalizing marijuana and removing it from the federal schedule of controlled substances, thanks to pressure from police and prohibition lobbyists (and a general lack of support from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden).

But the states are continuing to legalize on their own with the support of their voters, and more marijuana initiatives are on the ballot in November. South Dakota and Mississippi voters will be asked to permit the use of medical marijuana as a treatment for certain medical conditions. South Dakota voters will also be offered the chance to legalize recreational use, as will voters in Arizona, Montana, and New Jersey.

Mississippi. The Mississippi ballot initiative is a complicated mess that will require voters to tick multiple boxes. There are actually two competing bills to allow for medical marijuana, Proposition 65 and Alternative 65A. Voters will first be asked whether they want either measure to pass. Then regardless of whether they want either measure to pass, they’ll be asked to choose which measure they’d prefer. So technically, a voter can oppose medical marijuana legalization but then also decide which version they’d prefer if it passes anyway, and that vote will count.

Prop. 65 will allow the use of medical marijuana to treat more than 20 specific medical marijuana conditions and establishes possession limits and a sales tax rate for sales. Alternative 65A is the version put on the ballot by state lawmakers and would restrict medical marijuana use only to those with terminal illnesses.

Polling from earlier in the year showed a majority voting in favor of Prop. 65 by 52 percent. But this week Marijuana Moment reported that a sample ballot being circulated by the American Medical Association and the Mississippi State Medical Association (MSMA) is telling voters to vote no for both of them, but then to select the more restrictive 65A as their second option. This would seriously limit who would be allowed legal access to medical marijuana.

South Dakota. South Dakota voters get to decide whether to legalize medical marijuana and also to legalize recreational use. Measure 26 would establish medical marijuana as a legal treatment for anything certified as a “debilitating medical condition” by a physician. It would establish possession limits and would permit registered patients to grow marijuana at home.

South Dakota voters will also have the option to amend the state’s constitution to fully legalize recreational marijuana use. Constitutional Amendment A will allow recreational marijuana use for those over the age of 21 and possession and distribution of up to one ounce. The sale of marijuana would be taxed at 15 percent. Half of that revenue would be earmarked for public schools. The South Dakota amendment would allow residents who don’t live in a jurisdiction with a licensed retailer to grow their own.

Arizona. Arizona voters narrowly voted down marijuana legalization in 2016, but it’s back on the ballot again as Proposition 207. The proposition will legalize consumption by those over 21, allow people to grow up to six plants as long as they are in an enclosed area and not within public view, and would set a 16 percent sales tax rate.

Early polling had support for legalization widely ahead, but the latest numbers have voters split. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey opposes legalization, complaining that “Kids would become easy prey for an industry hungry to create a new generation of users.”

New Jersey. New Jersey’s vote is actually a referendum put on the ballot by the state’s legislature. This is the first time that state lawmakers actually voted to refer the matter to the voters, partly because the lawmakers themselves could not settle on a bill.

New Jersey’s referendum, Question 1, would update the state’s constitution to allow those over 21 to consume marijuana recreationally and would create a regulatory system to oversee a recreational marketplace. Current polls show marijuana legalization in New Jersey has strong support. The ad campaign there focuses on how much money the state spends arresting people for pot possession ($143 million annually).

Montana. Montana voters will have two marijuana ballot initiatives. The first, I-190, would allow legal consumption for adults over the age of 21. It will allow private cultivation of up to four plants, establish a retail regulatory regime, and set retail taxes at 20 percent.

There’s also a separate constitutional initiative, CI-118, that would amend the state’s constitution specifically to allow the state the authority to set a minimum legal age for the consumption of marijuana, just like it does for alcohol.

So even as Congress continues to stumble around and fail to respond to poll numbers showing that Americans support marijuana legalization, the states and voters are reforming their laws regardless.

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