Month: October 2020

Authored by Oliver Wyman via TheCritic.co.uk,

To those who see an intellectual case for Donald Trump as a contradiction in terms, Victor Davis Hanson is an unlikely figure.

A senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Dr Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal by George W Bush in 2007. He is the author of more than 20 books on classics, military history and more. When he isn’t writing or teaching, he’s managing his family’s farm. Dr Hanson is also a full-throated and unapologetic supporter of the president. Last year, Dr Hanson published The Case for Trump, a coherent and thoughtful argument for an often incoherent and thoughtless president.

Victor Davis Hanson. Image courtesy of the Hoover Institution

With under a week left in the presidential election, Dr Hanson spoke to me over the telephone from his farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley about whether Trump will win, why he supports the president and how the coronavirus has sharpened America’s political and class divides. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

How do you see the race right now? Who will win next week?

I think Trump will win the Electoral College. I’m not sure about the popular vote, but the more our experts and pundits reassert that 2016 cannot happen again, the more it seems like it is happening again. And by that I mean, more specifically, all the polls that were discredited in 2016 — the Politico poll and the Reuters poll, Fox or the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, the mainstream polls in other words — they have Trump losing in the key states just about at the rate that Trump was losing last time. And from what I can tell, they haven’t really altered their methodology. The other polls, the Democracy Institute, the Trafalgar poll, the Zogby poll, the Rasmussen poll, have him very close, if not deadlocked at the national level. And then, in these key swing states, deadlocked or slightly ahead.

And yet, we were told in 2016, that these were not credible polls. They turned out to be almost prescient in their accuracy. So there you have it.

And then what we’re not supposed to do is rely on anecdotal evidence.  But when you drive around communities in America — and I’ve been out a lot despite the quarantine — the enthusiasm is all on one side. It’s all Trump. There’s Trump signs, Trump motorcades, huge Trump rallies.

Because the data doesn’t seem logical, people don’t believe it. By that, I mean that African Americans might not vote just 8 per cent, but maybe 12 or 13 per cent for Trump, or Hispanics may not vote 31, but 35 or 36 per cent. Or college students, maybe a million and a half of them in swing states at these huge public universities, the biggest in the world — Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, University of Wisconsin, University of Miami, all of them — they’re not in session because of a lockdown. And students are not going to walk to the polls after being registered on campus, with the herd mentality and rah-rah exhortation that is normal. They are home in their basement or with their parents scattered all over. And I just don’t think they’re going to vote in the same numbers or with the same consistency as they did in 2016. I think that’ll benefit Trump as well.

If I accept your assessment of the race for the time being, what about Trump’s message is working?

If we had had this conversation in January, I think his critics would have said he was going to win, because of the booming economy, GDP, low unemployment, some foreign policy achievements.

But after Covid, the lockdown, the recession and the rioting and looting, the Democrats came up with a pretty effective strategy toward him. If I can use the vernacular, he became Donald Trump as Herbert Hoover, Donald Trump as Typhoid Mary, Donald Trump as Bull Connor and he was blamed for all of these problems.

At the same time, they had about a two-to-one edge in money. Most of the nation’s billionaires and big PACs were funding very effective ads against him. Then Joe Biden, once it was determined by his handlers that he had some cognitive issues, was pretty much put in isolation in his basement. He outsourced his campaign to surrogates and the media, who were 93-94 per cent for Biden according to the Shorenstein Center. And then he wasn’t allowed to go out and debate or barnstorm because of fear that he would say something like he did this week, that he was running against George, or that he had a fraud Task Force. He is capable of saying anything at any time. It can be quite embarrassing. So they kind of locked him down and let the news cycle take hold.

Trump hadn’t come up with an effective answer to that. And then three weeks ago, his campaign took a turn for the worse when he got Covid. He wasn’t able to do the rallies, people were predicting he would be in bed with the virus or post-viral fatigue for weeks or months, sort of like Boris Johnson. Then suddenly, with these new therapeutics, new drugs, he just bounced back. Suddenly he was at the rallies. Suddenly they were talking about vaccination. Suddenly he was able to make the argument that while the cases were spiking, they were not as morbid. The mortality rate was going down. GDP was going up. And at the very time that happened, we had the Joe Biden scandals. They are trying to run out the clock on them, and they may or may not be successful. But the result of all that is that he has surged and is now, I think, dead even.

You supported the president four years ago, as I understand it, and you support him in this election, obviously. How do those two cases for Trump differ? How does the 2016 case for Trump compare to the 2020 case for Trump?

The most important thing is that most politicians in the Western world lie. And so when Donald Trump said, “I’m going to build a wall with Mexico, and I’m going to take on China, I’m going to bring jobs back to the deindustrialised Midwest, I’m going to avoid optional military engagements in the Middle East, I’m going to put my foot on the accelerator of gas and oil production, I’m going to get the most conservative judges you can imagine” everybody thought, you know, this is Manhattan real estate talk.

But then when he got in, not only did he start doing that, but the forces arrayed against him. And, I should note, they were bipartisan. I mean, we had, almost immediately, talk of articles of impeachment, and then there was a move to declare him crazy under the 25th amendment, than the Emoluments Clause, then the Logan Act, and then 22 months of the Mueller Russia hoax, and then the impeachment. So it showed you that there was a lot of opposition to him, because he kept his promises.

Now he’s running as an incumbent, Joe Biden is not saying “he didn’t build a wall”, or “I want to put that embassy back in Tel Aviv”, or “I’m going to go back to the Obama position on China”, or “I think those NATO members should pay what they want; they don’t have to meet the 2 per cent commitment”. That’s different. So there is a grudging consensus that whatever you think of him, he’s really kept most of the promises. He has absolutely recalibrated the entire American judiciary with his appointments.

Were you surprised by the intensity of the opposition to Trump?

I’d never seen it before. I’d seen hyper-partisanship. But I’d never seen respected former government officials like Rosa Brooks writing nine days after he was elected that you should either impeach him, declare him crazy or have a military coup to remove him. I’ve never seen retired military officers of the caliber of a General Mattis, or McCaffrey or McRaven say of their commander in chief “the sooner he’s gone, the better”, or “he uses Nazi-like tactics”, or “he’s a Mussolini”. I’ve never seen that level of opposition.

Part of it is because he didn’t play by Marquess of Queensbury rules. When they went after John McCain and said he was senile or that Mitt Romney was a hazer who treated animals terribly, they just took it. And Trump came along and said, “I’m not going to lose nobly. I’m going to win ugly if I have to.” That appealed to his base, but it also won over some of his sceptics, because they were tired of Republicans at the national level not doing as well as they had been doing at the state and local levels, partly because of a failure to take off the gloves and handle the democrats in like kind, blow for blow.

After Trump won in 2016, there was a big debate about what explained support for the president. It was soon framed as cultural grievances versus economic grievances. What do you think of that framing, and how do you explain the rise of the president?

It was, in part, common to the Western world, not just the United States. It was same forces that voted for Brexit, that explained the surprising results in the Australian election as well as some push back in Canada. People who are on the coastal peripheries that had skills or were part of a professional class plugged into global markets — insurance, finance, media, academia, law, high tech — who made enormous amounts of money were exempt from the consequences of their own ideology. So they told people in the interior, whether it was on climate change, identity politics, or on immigration, this is what you’re going to do, and you’re the losers, you didn’t understand the economy. We can Xerox your muscular labour and outsource your fabrication or your farming or whatever. It’s cheaper somewhere else and you’re expendable.

Here in the United States, they became the deplorables, irredeemables, clingers, dregs, the people that Peter Struck in his text called the smelly ones at Walmart. Whatever they were, that group felt that they had done nothing wrong, that they were not racist, and that you had to give a second look at globalisation. They thought that while it was nice that people had eyeglasses in the Amazon, and that you can buy cheap stuff at Target or Walmart, there was a downside to the disruption in traditional life and to marginalisation of nationalism and borders, of a distinct culture and tradition, iconoclasm, all that stuff. They didn’t like it.

And Donald Trump went one step further than other politicians. He looked at the peculiarities of the American electoral system and said, you know, these people are in states that decide the election, and they have not been voting for either Democrat or Republican, they’ve been sitting out or they’re unhappy Republicans or they’re turned off Democrats, but I’m going to get four to six million of them to turnout in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina. And he did. Now the question is, can he do it again?

Let’s imagine he loses next week. And I know you think that that’s not going happen, but let’s say it does. Where do you think that energy will go?

That’s a very good question. I don’t see that group of people rallying to the left when we don’t really have a Democratic Party. It’s sort of analogous to the pre-Tony Blair Labour Party underneath Kinnock. That’s pretty much where the Democratic Party is now. I don’t see any of those issues — I shouldn’t say I don’t see, I know because I saw them in the primary — winning much support. That’s what elected the supposed moderate Joe Biden. People didn’t want the Green New Deal, they didn’t want reparations and open borders and Medicare for everybody and all that stuff. So I don’t think that’s going to be empowered. They’re going to try to take power, but I don’t think these people will gravitate to them.

They’re going to have to find a Republican candidate that has those signature Trump issues. It should be remembered that 90 per cent of Trump’s agenda was typical Republicanism, but he’s so tweaked it and modified it and adapted it that it got those people out. So somebody like Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, or Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, or another younger person coming up without the baggage of the Bush years, I think, can incorporate Trump’s ideas.

You mentioned the Democratic Party. I’m interested, do you give Biden any credit for not swerving left in the way many of his competitive competitors did during the primary? And do you entertain any possibility that a Biden administration will be moderate in a way that is kind of tolerable to those on the right who are worried about the far-left?

No. None. Zero. None.

Why?

Two reasons. Joe Biden at 77, is not the Joe Biden he was at 67. Every day he says something that is preposterous, and he doesn’t seem fully cognitively aware in a way that a president must be. That’s number one.

And number two, I might disagree slightly with your interpretation of why he was nominated. He failed in in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he was declared a loser. He came in fifth. And so Michael Bloomberg was trotted out as the nice veneer, a centrist that could carry the party. And it turned out he spent a billion dollars to prove to everybody that he was a very unlikeable fellow. Then the Democratic establishment was in a quandary, so they resuscitated Joe Biden, but with the proviso that he would be a vessel that would carry this leftist position. And so it’s worked pretty well, to the degree that he’s not not up and about, but when he makes these rare appearances, he gets caught out. So in the debate, he said we’re gonna end fossil fuels, and I think that will cost him Pennsylvania. He said some things about immigration and amnesties and the wall and things that are not 51 per cent issues.

Metaphorically, he’s like a hot air balloon that the left blew up. And then the carriage of progressivism is attached to it. Because he’s been a 47-year politician, his job was to get this across the finish line without having a Bernie Sanders veneer to it all.

Once he’s done, I think you’ll start to hear rumours form the left and left media (which is a redundancy) that Biden is surprisingly, shockingly befuddled or addled and this is really a concern and maybe we better examine it. If Biden should win, we’ll hear this and we’ll hear, probably in November or December, that the virus is de facto not an issue now. It’s over with, the Biden economy is recovered, there’s no need for quarantine. We’ll hear all that, but I think in a context where Joe Biden knowingly and courageously served his purpose.

If you look at the Democratic Party by House representation or the Senators, there’s no more blue dog moderates. They don’t exist anymore in the House. In the Senate, I mean, Amy Coney Barrett was a very brilliant, charismatic nominee and there wasn’t one Democrat that voted for her. You know, 90 Senators had voted for a pretty radical Sonia Sotomayor, just a decade or so ago. So, no I don’t think he’s going to govern as a centrist at all.

We haven’t talked much about the pandemic. How has it thrown the choice in this election into contrast? How has it framed the difference between the American left and right?

Well, I think it’s been cyclical. At the beginning, when the World Health Organisation said that it wasn’t transmissible, travel bans were not necessary, masks were unnecessary. And Anthony Fauci said go on a cruise, don’t wear a mask. Then that was recalibrated to “This is hyper deadly. This is very bad.” And Trump was confused. So he gave conflicting messages. Then we locked down the country for supposedly two weeks to level the curve. And that took on a life of its own for seven months. I think that really hurt the president because the economy was ruined and the quarantine was not evenly applied. If you wanted to protest the death of George Floyd or professed that you were protesting, all rules of quarantining were dropped. If you went out for a different type of rally, then all of a sudden you were arrested. Or if your business was open, you were arrested. So people lost confidence in the quarantine’s logic and systematic application, the fairness of it.

Now I think it’s starting to be a wash. Half the country is where Sweden is and the other half is where Germany or France is. In other words, half the country believes that with the therapeutics that got Donald Trump back in three days, and with a vaccination on horizon, and new studies coming out of Stanford Medical School showing that the morbidity under 70, not 60, may be as low as two to three per thousand, you just simply can’t justify destroying an economy.

Let me add a final caveat. This is a class issue now. I think here in the Western world, the people who are really suffering economically, from suicide, spouse or family abuse, missed cheques, missed surgeries, missed medications, are the lower and lower-middle class. And they’ve been hurt terribly. We don’t know how many have died from it or have had their lives ruined. But Trump is suggesting that the reaction to the virus at this point has been more lethal than the virus itself.

But does the net effect of the virus on the race hurt Trump? Or do you think that if it’s clarified these things in the way you described? Has it helped him at all?

It hurt Trump terribly. And then, three weeks ago, when he got the virus, he came up with a brilliant exegesis that people you can’t run a country from your basement, and that there were 100 million Americans out there growing food, delivering fuel, making stuff, and there’s an elite that stay safely in their basement and who had the ability and the opportunity to earn cash on Zoom or Skype. And he wasn’t gonna be part of that. He went out and said, I risked my own health to be with you guys. I took these experimental drugs to be with you guys. I’m with you guys. You’ve got to take risks. This is a great country. And that kind of worked, at least for his base. And especially with Biden secluded. So I think now what was a great detriment to his candidacy has been sort of neutralised.

People think, you know what? China gave us the virus, nobody could have cured it. Look at the deaths per million ratios in Spain or Italy or France or the UK. Except for Germany, they’re pretty much comparable, and in some cases, like Belgium, worse than the United States. So I think that’s where we are.

Following continuous quarterly net purchases since the start of 2011, in the third quarter of 2020 central banks switched to being modest net sellers for the first time in a decade, reducing global gold reserves by 12.1 tonnes in Q3 compared with purchases of 141.9 tons a year earlier, according to the latest Gold Demand Trends report by the World Gold Counsel.

And while that selling in itself would be notable, there are two very big caveats: not only have central banks remained net purchasers on a YTD, basis, with demand for the first three quarters totalling 220.6 tonnes, the selling was the results of just two reserve-strapped nations which rushed to convert gold into dollars: Turkey and Uzbekistan.

A few observations on Q3 activity which reflected two trends: a slowdown in purchases as the year has progressed combined with higher sales, which increased during the last quarter.

First, the WGC notes that there was more buying from familiar faces. Despite the quarterly net sales, six central banks increased their reserves in Q3 by a tonne or more, although total gross purchases were a modest 33t largely due to the continued economic hardship sparked by COVID-19. This has pre-occupied central banks and governments around the world, which have been forced to find USD-denominated liquidity. Indeed, as the WGC notes, “uncertainty has been elevated by the pandemic, motivating many investors – including central banks – to seek assets that will diversify and protect the value of their portfolios in times of crisis.” Central banks have been particularly hard hit by the low and negative interest rates on sovereign bonds, which make up the largest proportion of reserve assets for many. United Arab Emirates (7.4t), India (6.8t), Qatar (6.2t), Kyrgyz Republic (5t), Kazakhstan (4.9t), and Cambodia (1t) were notable, and familiar, buyers during the quarter.

Which brings us to the sellers… which were sizable but extremely concentrated. Reported gross sales jumped to 78.9t in Q3, with the rise mainly attributable to just two central banks: Turkey and Uzbekistan.

• Turkey, which is undergoing an unprecedented current and capital account crisis which has drained the central bank’s reserves to almost nothing as the Turkish lira has disintegrated, reduced gold reserves by 22.3 tonnes during the quarter, the first quarterly decline since Q4 2018, as it is well on its way to becoming the next Venezuela – a country which liquidates its gold to keep the lights on. As the chart below from Goldman shows, while Turkey hasn’t engaged in full-blown liquidation yet, it may do so sooner rather than later with its FX reserves (excl swaps) at all time lows.
  
  Although the story is a bit more complex: higher domestic gold demand in August and September led to heightened gold trading activity between commercial banks and the central bank, resulting in this decline. But on a YTD basis, the country remains the biggest gold buyer, adding 148.7 tonnes, although the inflection point seems to coincide around the point in time when the lira suddenly collapse. Turkey’s official gold holdings now amount to 561 tonnes and 47% of total reserves. In August, Hasan Yucel, the head of Turkey’s Gold Miners Association, indicated that national gold production was expected to increase by 44% this year. He also stated that since 2017 the central bank has been the sole buyer of all domestic output and that will likely continue this year.
• Uzbekistan reduced its gold reserves by 34.9t during Q3, bringing YTD net sales to 28.6t. Despite the sizable sale in Q3, gold reserves of 307t still account for 56% of total reserves. The country has seen a rise in gold exports this year as it looks to utilize its gold reserves, taking advantage of higher prices to combat the economic impact of the pandemic. Tajikistan (9.2t), Philippines (7.8t), Mongolia (2.4t), and Russia (1.2t) were the other notable but small sellers during the quarter.

“It’s not surprising that in the circumstances banks might look to their gold reserves,” said WGC analyst Louise Street. “Virtually all of the selling is from banks who buy from domestic sources taking advantage of the high gold price at a time when they are fiscally stretched.”

Central bank selling aside, total bullion demand fell 19% year-on-year to the lowest since 2009 in Q3, largely thanks to continued weakness in jewelry buying as a result of record high prices and the lockdown-induced economic slowdown. Indian jewelry demand fell by half, while Chinese jewelry consumption was also down. Overall jewelry demand fell to 333 tonnes, 29% below an already relatively anaemic Q3 2019.

By contrast, bar and coin demand strengthened, gaining 49% Y/Y to 222.1 tonnes as investors scrambled to buy paper gold. Much of the growth was also in official coins, due to continued strong safe-haven demand in Western markets and Turkey, where coins are the more prevalent form of gold investment. Q3 also saw continued inflows into gold-backed ETFs, which saw an eighth consecutive quarter of inflows. Q3 inflows of 272.5 tonnes pushed YTD flows to a record 1,003.3t and total global holdings of gold-backed ETFs to a new record of 3,880 tonnes.

Meanwhile, on the all important supply side, things are getting more ominous as total gold supply declined 3% year-on-year as mine production remained depressed, even after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in producers like South Africa. A quarterly uptick in recycling softened the decline according to Bloomberg, with consumers cashing in on high prices.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Thousands of voters in Butler County, Pennsylvania, said have they never received their ballots…

Nearly 40,000 registered voters in the county requested mail-in ballots, but only about 24 percent of them have been returned back to the county so far, authorities said.

“At first we thought that maybe it just was a delay in the postal system” due to the high number of requests, Leslie Osche, chair of the Butler County commissioners, was quoted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying.

“And that could still be the case. But nonetheless, when we realized that, we changed our strategy and now have begun to tell folks that if they haven’t received a ballot, they still have multiple options.”

“Our main focus—because it’s too late now to worry about this—we need to make sure we get these people their ballots,” Osche added.

A U.S. Postal Service (USPS) spokesperson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the agency is “unaware of any significant delays or issues and is in regular contact with the Board of Election as we work to locate and deliver ballots as they are presented to us.” As of Tuesday, voters in Pennsylvania cannot apply for a mail-in or absentee ballot.

A local county official, Aaron Sheasley, told CNN Friday that the county has received more than 10,000 phone calls about information related to the ballots that were requested but not received.

“Somewhere between the post office and the Pittsburgh sorting facility something happened,” Sheasley told the network.

“We don’t know what.” He added:

“We haven’t given out any numbers” about the number of missing ballots “because we simply don’t know.”

Speaking to CNN, Chuck Bugar, president of the American Postal Workers Union Pittsburgh chapter, said there is no record that suggests the missing ballots in Butler County made it to a Postal Service facility.

“There’s no pile of ballots that have been taken from the Butler County election committee that are sitting around,” Bugar said.

“There’s no record or indication that they entered the mail stream. There’s paperwork that goes along with it.”

Butler County voted for President Donald Trump over Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in 2016 about 66 percent to 29 percent. The county is located north of Pittsburgh and has approximately 150,000 registered voters. In 2020, both Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden have been holding events and rallies, vying to secure the key battleground state with 20 electoral votes.

The county told the Post-Gazette that voters can come to the Bureau of Elections and vote in person, provide them with identification, and officials will then give them a new mail-in ballot that a voter can return immediately. The original ballot that was mailed will be voided.

They also said that voters can vote at a local polling place in the county. Other alternatives are also provided.

Philadelphia City Council approved legislation, 14-3 vote, that prohibits law enforcement officers from using “less-lethal munitions,” such as rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray on demonstrators. 

The vote comes days after social unrest was sparked in the City of Brotherly Love – over the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., and days before the Nov. 03 presidential elections. The legislation is expected to be signed momentarily by Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney, who is trying to appease local constituents/demonstrators. 

Councilmember Helen Gym, the bill’s prime sponsor, said, “in banning the police use of less-lethal munitions in response to demonstrations, we are answering the calls of our constituents.”

Gym continued: “This is a moment where repairing trust between our residents, public officials, and police are essential. Residential neighborhoods are not warzones. Demonstrators are not enemy combatants. This is a first step in working with our communities to build a new model for public safety that is driven by their needs and their vision for the future.” 

While most councilmembers support the bill, three councilmembers, including Republican Councilmembers David Oh and Brian J. O’Neill, along with Democrat Bobby Henon, voted against it. Their opposition stemmed from what they said would be the “chilling effects” of police officers not having the right tools to enforce public safety.

Philadelphia Mayor’s Office released an update Thursday of the overall situation in the metro area. At least 11 ATMs were blown up across town, 57 police officers injured, and over 212 felony or misdemeanors arrests. 

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf was quick to deploy the Pennsylvania National Guard on Tuesday with mandatory curfews on Wednesday.

Readers may recall, other Democratic cities banned “less-than-lethal” weapons earlier this year, following the George Floyd protests.  

Seattle City Council voted unanimously to ban police from chokeholds, tear gas, pepper spray, and other crowd-control weapons in June. 

This is another example of pandering urban Democrats, placing their political interest above police officers’ health and safety and the community they are supposed to be protecting.

Also, suppose officers, barred from carrying “less-lethal munitions,” what happens when they’re forced into a situation where they have no alternative in firing their service weapon? 

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity?

Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

School Threatens to Arrest 12 Year Old Over Three Missed Zoom Classes

A California school sent a letter threatening to arrest and prosecute a 12 year old boy who missed 90 minutes of online virtual classes.

The letter says the middle-schooler is considered truant if he misses more than a half hour of any given class.

When the boy’s father complained about the threat to his son (who happens to be an excellent student and makes straight A’s), the school principal said his hands were tied.

California’s laws regarding truancy force schools to send the warning letter, and funnel kids into the state’s prison pipeline.

Click here to read the full story.

*  *  *

Mother Faces Prison for Keeping Kids Home From School

A mother of two in the UK has a great reason to keep her kids home from school.

She is especially at risk of complications if she contracts COVID-19 due to diabetes, asthma, and an underactive thyroid. According to these conditions, the UK’s socialized health system, the NHS, classifies her as clinically vulnerable.

But that doesn’t matter to the local education welfare officer, who sent a letter to the mom demanding her children return to school, or she will face up to three months in prison and a £2,500 fine.

So first the government forces everyone to close their businesses and stay home. Now they want to force a vulnerable person into contact with others.

Isn’t it fun having the government control your life?

Click here to read the full story.

*  *  *

UK Allows Migrant Posing as Child into School

When an asylum-seeker arrives in the United Kingdom without a passport or birth certificate, the policy is to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That’s how a balding man from Gambia who looks about 40 years old ended up in a UK high school.

The man claims to be 15 years old, which qualifies him for extra government support as an unaccompanied minor. Naturally, he is not required to prove his claim of being 15. The government merely accepts his word, even though he clearly looks MUCH older.

When one schoolgirl shared pictures of the man on social media, questioning his age, the school called her a bully.

Click here to read the full story.

*  *  *

Tampax Competes for Wokest Corporation

If you thought Tampax was a women’s hygiene product brand, you were wrong.

The company recently sent a Tweet that read:

“Fact: Not all women have periods. Also a fact: Not all people with periods are women. Let’s celebrate the diversity of all people who bleed!”

Now it’s somehow controversial to say that one set of sexual organs requires Tampax’s products, and the other does not.

In order to be more inclusive, we have to deny basic scientific facts of life, like the biological differences between males and females.

Of course, like J.K. Rowling, you will get in trouble these days for thinking like that.

The Harry Potter author was recently “canceled” for Tweeting, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Click here to see the Twitter thread.

*  *  *

The Only Cop Arrested Was The Whistleblower

Six months ago, a man died after two police officers arrested him in a drug sting.

The Police Department in the city of Joliet, Illinois (about 30 miles from Chicago) refused to release video footage from the patrol car that night showing how the man died.

But another officer was so disgusted by his colleagues’ misconduct that he leaked the video to the public.

The video shows the officers swearing at the detainee, slapping him, shoving a police baton down his throat, and holding his nose shut to try to make him spit something out, presumably drugs.

The suspect died a short time later.

But the only arrest that resulted from this incident was the whistleblower– the third officer who leaked the video footage.

He’s now charged with official misconduct for unauthorized access to the video evidence and faces five years in prison.

Click here to read the full story.

*  *  *

On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

Following contentious Congressional testimony this week from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and a 22% drop on Friday, the social media giant finally decided to unlock the New York Post‘s account just days before the general election – after more than two weeks in Twitter jail for posting a negative article on the company’s preferred candidate, Joe Biden.

In a Friday afternoon thread, Twitter Safety wrote that their policies are ‘living documents’ which they’re willing to ‘update and adjust when we encounter new scenarios or receive important feedback from the public.’

The company says they’re ‘updating our practice of not retroactively overturning prior enforcement,” and have decided to let the Post have their account back.

In response, we’re updating our practice of not retroactively overturning prior enforcement.

Decisions made under policies that are subsequently changed & published can now be appealed if the account at issue is a driver of that change. We believe this is fair and appropriate.

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 30, 2020

This means that because a specific @nypost enforcement led us to update the Hacked Materials Policy, we will no longer restrict their account under the terms of the previous policy and they can now Tweet again.

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 30, 2020

In short, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was able to stop Twitter’s obvious election meddling by silencing one of the largest (and oldest) outlets in the country.

Sen. Ted Cruz:

“Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you? And put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report, and what the American people are allowed to hear… and why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC?” pic.twitter.com/lrC9II2MxL

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 28, 2020

After weeks of grandstanding from @Twitter, it’s good to have the @nypost back.

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 30, 2020

TWITTER SAYS WILL NO LONGER RESTRICT NEW YORK POST ACCOUNT pic.twitter.com/RLDldPMaiq

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 30, 2020

The company was last able to post on October 14, the day they dropped a bombshell report regarding alleged incriminating contents on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Developing…

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

On Wednesday, while the broad stock market was getting shellacked, and companies like Everbridge, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Dynatrace were suffering double digit freefalls, something else was going on.  Gold and silver were also getting shellacked.

But it wasn’t all crash and burn.  First Solar, Rolls-Royce Holdings, and CoreLogic all notched double digit gains.  The dollar, as measured by the dollar index, gold, silver, and most stocks, was also up.  And something else was up too…

Most investors likely didn’t notice that American firearm manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Company managed to eke out a small return.  Why would they?  A return of 0.43 percent is nothing to write home about.

Nonetheless, we contend that Ruger’s modest gain in the face of a massive selloff is something that should get the attention of investors.  It’s something that should also get the attention of non-investors.  Guns are in high demand.  So is ammo.

Naturally, guns and ammo should be in high demand.  They are useful.  Sometimes they are especially useful.  And right now happens to be one of those times.

Without question something wicked is brewing.  Politicians, academics, and the media have been fermenting public divisions for decades.  Now a volatile cocktail of rage threatens to blow its top off sometime on or shortly after election day.  People are gunning up just in case the chaos – something more than things that go bump in the night – arrives at their doorstep.

What to make of it…

“Death to America!”

The weather may have cooled down.  But the populace still burns hot.  Factions and fanatics look for any excuse to destroy public usufructs.  And they don’t have to look far to find one.

For example, this week, following the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia, people went mad.  First they took to the streets.  Then they took to setting dumpsters on fire.  After that, they took to looting Walmart and other stores.

The main intent of Philadelphia’s violent mobs was not to protest the shooting of Wallace.  Rather, it was to get free stuff.  Flat screen TVs were particularly popular.

Here at the Economic Prism we don’t agree with theft of any kind…be it currency debasement, confiscatory taxes and fees, or mob looting.  But at least the mobs in Philadelphia were clear of their intent.  They wanted free stuff.  So they took it.

The mobs in Portland, Seattle, and Kenosha were of a different variety.  The Wall Street Journal offers the following distinction:

“‘Death to America!’ is a common refrain from antifa rioters from Portland, Ore., to Kenosha, Wis.  Children are in the streets calling for the country’s destruction while mobs of college kids trash public spaces, filming themselves as though part of a performance-art spectacle.  […]

“These acts of violence encapsulate five decades of neo-Marxist indoctrination in American schools, colleges and universities.  The left’s ‘long march’ through the institutions is all but complete.  […].  America’s young, especially those raised in middle-class or affluent homes, have been so brainwashed that they no longer notice how absurd it is to call for the eradication of their own nation-state, and to do so in the lingo of Iran’s mullahs.”

‘Death to America!’ is a hollow mantra.  Just what is it that these soft minded brats think they’re shouting death to?  The American republic has been dead since at least 1913.

Countdown To Chaos

A great boon for Washington was attained that year.  Honest and prudent statesmen offering small government and sound financial policies were forever rendered powerless.  So, too, the hallowed reach along the banks of the Potomac River where politics and money mix forever slipped into venality.  Democratic mob rule supplanted the limited government of a republic.

In the year 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified giving Congress the power to collect taxes on incomes.  That same year the states also ratified the Seventeenth Amendment, which established direct election of Senators by popular vote.  Then, before the year concluded, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was passed delegating the right to issue money from Congress to the Federal Reserve.

After the events of 1913, the American republic ceased to exist.  The federal government was given carte blanche authority to consolidate and centralize power.  Moreover, the federal government had the power to plunder the lives of its citizens on a grand scale.  That is, it had near limitless power to tax, borrow, spend, and inflate the currency.

The effects of the Sixteenth Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act are themes we commonly explore.  However, the effects of the Seventeenth Amendment are equally destructive.

In short, the Seventeenth Amendment allows the Senate to buy votes from their constituents in exchange for delivering federal money back to their districts.  This ensures the government acts to meet the collective demand for private security through public spending.  It also rewards political corruption and public graft.

These realities are not taught at universities.  They require self-study, independent learning, and deep thinking to uncover.  By this, shouts of ‘Death to America!’ by radicalized youth fall short of past grievances.

At least shouts of ‘Bread or Blood’ by rioters of East Anglia, Britain, in 1816, were clear in their rage.  Bread prices had inflated beyond wages.  Stomachs were empty.

Today’s ‘Death to America!’ rioter is unaware that the American republic is long gone.  Thus, what they are rampaging for is more of the policies that brought us to this disagreeable place.  Wealth redistribution and corruption are two of the fundamental canons of progressive socialism.  Throw a ‘woke’ hyper focus on race into the mix and progressive socialism can take a far more dangerous turn.

Perhaps next week’s election day will come and go without a hitch.  But with all the idiots on parade, this is highly doubtful.  The countdown to chaos is on.  Plan accordingly.

We have extensively followed the collapse in rental prices since the beginning of the pandemic here on Zero Hedge (for examples, look here  and here and here). In addition to prices collapsing, some tenants affected by the lockdowns have simply decided they no longer want to pay rent and are stiffing their landlords with little consequences. 

There’s not doubt that many renters – including many businesses – don’t have the means they once did to pay their rents. 

And though we knew the fall in prices was likely to get worse before it got better, the Wall Street Journal is taking it one step further and now asking the question of whether or not the rental price plunge could actually set off the next housing crisis. 

Another question also remains: how bad will the eviction scene be when the protections against eviction put into place by federal and local government expire? It is estimated that such moratoriums may wear off by January 2021, or even sooner. At that point, renters will need to pay up for the months they’ve missed.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a study of unemployed workers last week that estimated outstanding rent debt could reach $7.2 billion before the end of 2020. Moody’s has estimated that it could reach an astounding $70 billion if there is no further stimulus. 

Moody’s estimates that 12.8 million Americans would owe an average of $5,400 from missed rent payments. 

Though the $70 billion pales in comparison to the $1.3 trillion that set off the subprime mortgage crisis, the 12.8 million Americans affected far surpasses the 3.8 million people who were foreclosed on during the housing crisis. At the same time, housing prices are actually rising as a wave of owners move from the city to the suburbs. 

However about 25% of renter households that have children are now on the hook for back rent. Women and people of color are disproportionately more likely to owe back rent while black and Latino Californians are twice as likely to face rent insecurity than white Californians, according to the U.S. Census. 

The debt could be enough to stifle a recovery coming out of the pandemic, the WSJ notes. Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist, said: “These households will have to make some pretty massive financial choices and pull back on other spending to pay their rent. That’s a hit to the economy.”

During the beginning of the pandemic, many households made a shift to credit cards to try and stay afloat. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve noted that “credit payments to small and medium-size businesses connected to rental real estate increased by more than 70% in the spring”. Those numbers remain elevated, near 50% higher than 2019, still.

Kate Bulger, a financial counselor specializing in housing debt at the Money Management International counseling firm, said: “Even if now they are able to make their rent payment, that huge inflation to their credit-card debt has become a new threat to their budget and their ability to cover all their expenses.”

She says the number of clients she has worked with who have put rent on credit cards “has exploded”.

The only question is whether or not the economy is next to “explode”…