Month: December 2020

Charles Schwab is finally joining the likes of Tesla, Oracle, HP and Palantir – all of which have left heavily-taxed California for Texas, where the personal income tax rate is zero, and employees can afford to spend the rest of their COVID-19 lockdown without hearing their neighbors argue on the other side of a shared wall.

Announced in November 2019, the company is just days away from embarking on their January 1st move as part of a $26 billion merger with TD Ameritrade – abandoning their San Francisco headquarters for a 70-acre campus in Dallas-Fort Worth that boasts 500,000 square-feet of office space. The campus was estimated to cost around $100 million, while the Ameritrade merger is expected to be completed in 2H20 with full integration expected within 12-36 months.

Charles Schwab to Officially Move Headquarters to Denton County, Texas on Jan. 1.

Welcome to Texas @CharlesSchwab.

I’ve talked to Chuck, I know Chuck.

He wants to keep Texas, Texas.https://t.co/fMjP0edpB1

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 29, 2020

In November,  Schwab chairman and founder Charles Schwab noted that one of the drivers in the move out of California was the high cost of doing business in the state, “…the costs of doing business here are so much higher than some other place.”

Estimated cost savings are in the 20% range, or $2 billion within three years. In other words, their new campus will pay for itself within months.

California, meanwhile, is going to run out of things to tax.

They’re gonna tax the one remaining corporation at like 56,000% before too long.

— Auxityne (@Auxityne) December 29, 2020

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

The World Health Organisation has warned that a worse pandemic than COVID could be around the corner and that what we’ve seen so far in 2020 is “not necessarily the big one”.

With global lockdowns, international stripping of freedoms, and the decimation of small businesses and the economy on the whole, it is difficult to imagine how it could get any worse.

Yet the WHO is predicting that could very well be the case.

The head of the WHO emergencies program, Dr Mike Ryan, said during a media briefing that “this pandemic has been very severe … it has affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one.”

“This is a wake-up call. We are learning, now, how to do things better: science, logistics, training and governance, how to communicate better. But the planet is fragile,” Ryan added.

“We live in an increasingly complex global society. These threats will continue. If there is one thing we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, is we need to get our act together. We need to honour those we’ve lost by getting better at what we do every day,” he continued.

Ryan also stated that despite the vaccine, the virus is set to become endemic, and will never go away.

“The likely scenario is the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat of a threat,” Ryan said.

Professor David Heymann, the chair of the WHO’s strategic and technical advisory group for infectious hazards, added that “it appears the destiny of SARS-CoV-2 [Covid-19] is to become endemic, as have four other human coronaviruses, and that it will continue to mutate as it reproduces in human cells, especially in areas of more intense admission.”

Elsewhere during the briefing, WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said that the roll out of vaccines does not mean social distancing or mask wearing can go away.

“I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,” Swaminathan said.

The comments come after Swaminathan warned that the restrictive lockdown measures won’t let up until “the end of 2021” when “population immunity” is achieved.

“It’s going to take till the end of 2021 till we start seeing some level of population immunity coming up in some countries,” Swaminathan said last week.

As we reported two weeks ago, The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), based in Sweden, has found that the majority of nations across the globe have implemented COVID related restrictions that have severely eroded the liberties of their citizens.

The study revealed that 61 per cent of countries have used restrictions “that were concerning from a democracy and human rights perspective.”

“These [restrictions] violated democratic standards because they were either disproportionate, illegal, indefinite or unnecessary in relation to the health threat,” the group declared in its report.

If a greater pandemic is coming, as the WHO promises, then it is clear to see that such erosions of freedom will be amped up even further, if the same pattern is followed.

One Lewis County, Washington, Sheriff has had enough. 

Sheriff Rob Snaza posted an interview to Facebook on December 23, where he questioned the science behind closing dining in Lewis County and voiced his support for a local restaurant that is in the midst of a standoff with the Governor. 

Spiffy’s Restaurant in Lewis County, Washington, is now facing over $100,000 in fines as a result of allowing indoor dining, which is currently prohibited in the state. The restaurant has been in business for nearly 50 years and faces the threat of shutdown if it can’t continue its business, according to The Chronicle. 

Snaza talked about the owner, Rod Samuelson, and said he had been a customer for 30 years: “During that time they’ve been open, they’ve been open to the community. They’ve opened their hearts whether it’s donations, whether it’s supporting families. And so knowing Rod’s story was huge in making the decision that I support Spiffy’s. And I know we have laws out there, we have all these things going on, but at the same time, what is right and what is wrong?”

He continued: “We need to stand up for our constitutional rights. So when we talk about these people, we’re talking about single moms, single parents, or dual-parent income, that both work at a restaurant. And all their livelihood is based on their business. And they’re losing that, simply because someone decided to change the rulebook.”

The statement comes days before Spiffy’s faces a hearing in Lewis County Superior Court, after the State Department of Labor and Industries sought a restraining order against the business. 

L&I Spokesperson Tim Church told The Chronicle: ““It brings it into a whole other realm. If they continue to be open, we can make a motion for contempt of court.”

As The Chronicle notes:

Continuing to offer indoor dining in violation of the court order is considered a gross misdemeanor, punishable by $10,000 and up to six months in jail. It could also result in a contempt of court charge, which is a criminal charge. The order notes that L&I “has a clear legal right to enforce the requirements of the Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act and the rules promulgated thereunder.”

Protesters and supporters are expected to rally outside the courthouse the day of the hearing. 

“The ban on indoor service and dining has been hurtful to our community,” Snaza said. “Our economy is being shut down because our governor has elected to determine who is essential and who is not. And really, who has that? It seems that the people that have the paycheck are the ones that are determining who’s a non-essential.”

He concluded: “We need to stand up as conservatives, as Republicans. We need to stand up for our constitutional rights, and we need to say enough is enough, allow our people to go back to work. The data does not make sense. When I say don’t be a sheep, I mean don’t be a sheep. I mean listen to yourself. Check the facts out for yourself and make your own decision.”

Authored by Mark Glennon and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

To countless politicians and critics nationally and locally, it was perhaps the most vile thing Congress ever produced.

The “worst bill in the history of the United States Congress,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The American plutocracy gets its immoral tax bill,” wrote Jesse Jackson in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Sheer greed, an effort by the…. ‘malefactors of great wealth’ to escape more of their obligations to the society,” wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

It was TCJA, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and its alleged sin was a massive give-away to the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class.

When the bill was passed in 2017 we said to hold off on that judgement.

“One thing for sure,” we wrote, “is that wildly hysterical opponents have convinced the middle class they’ll be getting a tax increase, and that’s nonsense.”

It turns out that may have been understatement.

For the first time, we have the actual results instead of estimates and assertions.

In 2018, the first year for which we have hard numbers on TCJA’s effect, the wealthiest Americans paid a greater portion of the burden than they did before.

There’s more. TCJA, according to separate research, lopped a full trillion dollars off the value of high-end homes, not middle-class homes, which was part of a trade-off that accrued to the benefit of the country as a whole.

Here are the details:

The IRS publishes data on which income groups paid how much about two years after each year’s filing deadline. Those numbers for 2018 recently came out and were analyzed by the NTPU, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Their conclusions:

As a result of the TCJA, the share of federal income taxes paid increased for the top 1 percent from 38.5 percent in 2017 to 40.1 percent in 2018…

On top of this, the share of income taxes paid by the top 5 percent, top 10 percent, top 25 percent, and top 50 percent all increased.

The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers saw their share of federal individual income taxes drop from 3.1 percent to 2.9 percent.

Their full report is here.

How can that be? TCJA cut rates for high earners and some supposed experts said at the time that the result would be a windfall for the rich.

The answer is due in part to lower rates for everybody, a higher standard deduction and additional provisions designed to ease burdens low-income earners such as the increased child tax credit, all of which were in TCJA.

But there’s clearly another reason why higher earners didn’t get a windfall, one that became immediately obvious to anybody paying high property taxes in states like Illinois. For high earners, TCJA slashed the SALT deduction – deductions for state and local income tax, sales tax, and property taxes, essentially capping them at $10,000. With a higher standard deduction protecting low and moderate incomes, that cap only hit big earners.

And it’s for that reason that the impact of TCJA goes far beyond NTPU’s study. High property taxes and reduced deductibility depress home prices. Moody’s Analytics quantified that effect in research last year.

Specifically, Moody’s estimates that TCJA’s reduction in SALT deductions means home prices are $1 trillion lower than they would be otherwise.

That loss is almost entirely concentrated on big earners and those with expensive homes in high tax states. The middle class gets the standard deduction, which TCJA increased, or if they itemize, they don’t hit the $10,000 cap. So, the tax code changes hurt home values most in the wealthiest areas in the highest property tax states – Illinois, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, according to Moody’s.

You can see it in Moody’s data below of the 40 hardest-hit counties below. They are all in high property tax states with relatively high incomes.

Notice that Cook County and all Chicago’s collar counties are on that list:

The point is that the savings for the general public that resulted from reduced SALT deductions were paid for heavily by the wealthy through reduced home values. TCJA was indeed progressive.

The bigger lesson is to beware of claims about what’s progressive and what isn’t. Politicians often don’t know or truly care about the difference.

Supposedly progressive Senators like Senators Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, for example, want to double down on the hostility to TCJA by eliminating the cap on SALT deductions. That means they are directly supporting a tax cut for the rich. Schumer said, “I want to tell you this: If I become majority leader, one of the first things I will do is we will eliminate [the cap] forever…. It will be dead, gone and buried.” Pelosi has tried to remove the cap as part of various pandemic relief proposals.

Here in Illinois, the supposed regressivity of TCJA was sometimes used to support the case for a counterbalance through the failed Fair Tax proposal, which would have allowed for progressive tax hikes at the state level. That rationale was wrong, and the Fair Tax would have been a mistake for separate reasons that we often wrote about – Illinois already has an uncompetitively high tax burden. Trying to address inequality through state tax increases where the tax base is already fleeing because of high taxes is folly.

Photo by Thomas de LUZE on Unsplash

TCJA had other pros and cons not discussed here. Personally, I thought at the time it went too far too fast because, among other reasons, the economy was red hot, so some of the economic stimulus it provided would have been better to preserve for tougher times (like now).

But it’s good to see that the hysteria about it being regressive turned out wrong, at least so far.

In the coming year, we hope to write more about how to address income and wealth inequality focusing on what truly works and what doesn’t. That’s an extraordinarily complex matter in which sorting facts from political hyperbole isn’t easy, as TCJA has shown.

Oil prices managed modest gains today as hopes of a bigger bailout faded and stocks were under pressure.

Higher stimulus checks could “invigorate oil demand,” said Bob Yawger, head of the futures division at Mizuho Securities.

“Without the additional stimulus, it could be yet another drag on oil demand. That’s what is undermining oil futures now.”

For now all algo eyes will be inventories to determine the short-term trend…

API

• Crude -4.875mm (-3.1mm exp)

• Cushing +131k

• Gasoline -718k

• Distillates -1.877mm

The prior week’s across the board draws (from crude to products) was expected to continue last week and did with a bigger than expected 4.875mm draw in crude…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI hovered around $48 ahead of the API print and extended gains after…

As a reminder, OPEC+ will meet next week to decide on production levels for February. The producer group is set to add another 500,000 barrels a day of output to the market from January. Russia’s deputy prime minister has said the nation would support a further gradual increase in production in February.

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

In Part One of this article I laid out the case the “dark winter”  narrative and how an experimental vaccine marketed like a tech product by Big Pharma and their cronies are part of a globalist scheme to reset the world and force us into subservience.

Now we get to Biden’s campaign slogan, which began to be adopted in August 2020, and was beaten like a dead horse just before and after the rigged election. “Build back better” must have played well among the useless eater, mouth breather demographic, when tested by Biden’s handlers. Biden would pop his head out of the basement periodically to stumble through a teleprompter speech where he was instructed to utter “build back better” three or four times.

Then the contemptibly compliant corporate media expounded on the narrative as a brilliant plan by the wise statesman Joe Biden to save America from the murderous machinations of the evil orange man. Again, Google Trends reveals the coordinated effort to use this phrase in their efforts to steal the presidential election. If you think this was just a brilliant strategy by Biden’s handlers, you haven’t been paying attention. This is the globalist slogan to change the world.

“Build back better” has been a globalist slogan for over a decade. The definition per our friends at the UN is “a holistic concept using post-disaster reconstruction and recovery as an opportunity to improve a community’s physical, social, environmental and economic conditions to create a more resilient community in an effective and efficient way.”

Now you get the gist of why this slogan is being flogged to death by not only Biden, but his globalist colleagues around the globe. They need a disaster to build a new world in the image they desire – green, global control, de-population, MMT, and ruled by oligarchs like Gates, Soros, Bloomberg, Schwab and the rest of the Davos crowd. They see the deaths of a few million people as an opportunity to lockdown and control the planet.

You begin to understand the basis for this catch phrase when you research its origins. It first surfaced in a 2009 UN press release, marking “International Mother Earth Day”, a made up globalist holiday. The UN used the fake climate crisis to urge governments to “build back better” by creating a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive societies after the financial crisis. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Bill Clinton and UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-Moon used the phrase in 2009 regarding Haiti. How did that work out for Haitians?

BBB also refers to the official Sendai Framework of disaster recovery that was adopted in the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan in 2015. The World Bank also uses the phrase in its Unbreakable report, which details the devastation disasters have on poor communities. It highlights the need to “build back better” after meeting essential needs in poor communities. This phrase reeks of a globalist agenda.

The European Commission used the phrase in May of this year when announcing their 750 billion Euro stimulus fund to “build back better” through “channels that contribute to a greener more sustainable and resilient society.” Meaning no fossil fuels, massive tax increases, and obeying those who know what’s best for you – I’m surprised they haven’t rolled out a new sitcom called Soros Knows Best. Of course, our favorite vacuous black face male model PM, Justin Trudeau, virtue signaled his allegiance to the globalist green agenda in August, saying: “We need to reset the approach of this government for a recovery to build back better.”

Another Soros protégé, totalitarian extraordinaire, Jacinda Ardern, NZ PM, has fervently used the assigned phrase when bloviating about her green recovery plans. Next on the agenda are climate lockdowns. Lastly, we have globalist fool/tool Boris Johnson, when he isn’t busy cancelling Christmas based on junk “science”, doing as he is told and uttering his “build back better” lines, as the UK descends into an Orwellian dystopian nightmare.

These billionaire-funded ego-maniacal authoritarians must have a disaster in order to “build back better” from. Essentially this globalist plot to change the world is exploiting this over-hyped coronavirus pandemic to initiate Schwab’s Great Reset, where the serfs will own nothing and be happy, while the oligarch lords and their apparatchiks live lives of luxury and plenty, inflicting mandates and regulations upon their subjects. The coronavirus crisis will be replaced with the climate crisis as the creation of perpetual disaster allows the globalists to implement their master new world order plan.

Everything happening in the world is inter-connected and part of a sinister plot to control the world. The disaster is not the coronavirus, but the purposeful destruction of the global economic system by these evil men and women. The lockdowns, mandatory masking, debt creation, and destruction of small businesses is necessary for these corporate fascist globalists to destroy our existing way of life, to reset the world in their warped dystopian vision.

Google Trends once again exposes their master plan as Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset scheme coincided with Biden’s “dark winter” and “build back better” narrative to psychologically condition the masses for their plan to transform a world of independent nations acting in their best interests, with citizens free to live their lives in a way of their choosing, operating within community standards and agreed upon rules, and able to climb as high as their talents and ambitions take them, to a world ruled by oligarchs, where the people are treated like cattle, freedoms restricted, free thought censored, and all communications electronically surveilled. With the threat of imprisonment and capital punishment for those who do not bend the knee.

Schwab published his book COVID-19: The Great Reset in July 2020 in conjunction with the massive increase in purposely flawed PCR testing, guaranteed to generate enough false positives to scare the world into Great Reset submission. They are no longer operating in the shadows but feel emboldened by this fake pandemic “disaster” to lay out their utopian plans to control our lives, because their hubris knows no bounds. Schwab’s rationale for resetting the world, as laid out in his book is as follows:

• Covid-19 has plunged the world into the most challenging times in generations

• The world has changed forever creating economic, social, and environmental disruptions.

• Millions of companies’ risk falling behind and few will thrive.

• Life as we know it is unraveling, offering the opportunity for transformation and reimagination.

• The sudden and violent nature of the shock is overwhelming, as unemployment can cause social unrest and mass migration.

• The world is systematically connected and must act as one and evolve to address extreme consequences of disasters like Covid-19.

• The dramatic rise in unemployment, global social unrest caused by BLM, and growing tension between China and the U.S. were exacerbated by the pandemic. We are at a critical juncture where the potential for change is unlimited and only bound by our imagination.

• Societies need to be more equitable, exhibiting solidarity, looking to the needs of the many, with economies more inclusive, and dismantling the status quo.

• The success of the Great Reset requires immense change, creating a new social contract, international collaboration, and investment in the environment.

• Building back better needs to be adopted by leaders around the world and stimulus packages must include climate initiatives to achieve the goals of Agenda 2030.

Klaus and his billionaire buddies have big plans, and this faux pandemic crisis was the perfect “opportunity” to achieve their globalist corporate Marxist dreams. Wealthy powerful oligarchs believe forcing their warped totalitarian ideas upon the world by any means necessary. The ends always justify the means, no matter how deceitful and evil the means, for these arrogant sociopaths. Schwab and his ilk are skilled at using what appears to be sensible language when they are attempting to subvert our Constitutional rights, while imposing draconian tyrannical measures without the consent of the governed.

Schwab feigns concern for the millions of small businesses that have been purposefully destroyed by the lockdown mandates he and his allies support wholeheartedly, while being in the pocket of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey and the rest of the mega-corporations who have reaped obscene profits from this plandemic. The plan has been to destroy small business, so the connected corporations could harvest their customers.

Schwab is almost giddy at the prospects of an unraveling world where he and his accomplices, who believe they can control an infinitely complex world because they are the smartest guys in the room, can implement centralized control using their Marxist neo-feudal dogmas. Marxism is based upon the abolition of private property, so their “you will own nothing, and be happy” slogan tells you all you need to know.

They are using the surge in unemployment and the social unrest caused by the black lives matter narrative as the imperative for a coordinated global transformation of the world as they want it to be. We are supposed to trust the people who created the mass unemployment through senseless lockdowns and encouraged the BLM and ANTIFA terrorists to loot, burn and destroy small businesses in cities across America. Their green agenda spokes-morons, AOC and Greta, are perfect representatives for the idiocy of their movement.

They are purposely tearing our society apart with their mandatory masking and demanding humans fear other humans as disease carrying parasites, as a fearful, depressed, and unemployed populace is easily manipulated and bribable with their own tax money, distributed to them by the government that has ruined their lives. Chaos, bankruptcy, and dehumanization are an essential ingredient in a successful Great Reset. These are the results purposely initiated by Democrat governors and mayors to achieve their goals.

Murder increases in 2020:

• ATL, 58%

• CHI, 56%

• DAL, 24%

• LA, 31%

• NYC, 39%

• MIN, 74%

• Philly, 39%

• SF, 32%

Their techno-fascist style of green Marxism is being funded by the Wall Street owned Federal Reserve and their central banker collaborators in Europe and Asia, promoted by their corporate media partners; bankrolled by Soros, Gates, Bloomberg and other left wing oligarchs; codified into the political realm by captured corrupt politicians; supported by mega-corporations who have vacuumed up the profits of the 40% of small businesses that have been forced out of business by these traitorous degenerates; and enabled by the Silicon Valley billionaire social media oppressive censorship police.

Their goal is to have governments surrender their sovereignty to a small cadre of elites who want to subjugate the world under their sole technocratic domination. They initiated their “new normal” narrative in May 2020 to condition the masses into believing things could never go back to the way they were. Which qualifies as the Big Lie of our time.

In Part Three of this article J.R.R. Tolkien will provide guidance for those of us choosing to fight the Great Reset agenda of the globalist oligarchs.

*  *  *

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