Month: July 2021

Real Vision’s Jack Farley welcomes Samuel Burke, managing editor, and Weston Nakamura to discuss the decline in U.S. jobless claims and surging oil prices as OPEC agrees to increase production. The trio covers the economic recovery as jobless claims decline and advanced unemployment benefits expire. Additionally, they explain the implications of OPEC’s decision to increase production starting in August as oil prices spike due to demand from wealthy countries. Burke and Farley continue to follow the delta variant as new countries institute travel restrictions to prevent the spread.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Several media outlets reported on Wednesday that the US is only days away from completing its Afghanistan “withdrawal,” but the plan involves keeping at least 650 troops in the country to guard the US embassy and help secure the Kabul airport.

One unnamed military official told CNN that the US could leave up to 1,000 troops in Afghanistan after the “formal withdrawal,” but another official insisted it wouldn’t be more than 650 troops.

The 650 number is what most outlets have reported. Initial reports said the US would leave the 650 for the embassy indefinitely, and another small force would stay until President Biden’s September 11th deadline to help Turkish troops secure the Kabul airport, which could explain the 1,000 number.

There are currently about 500 Turkish troops guarding Kabul airport, and the US wants them to stay. The two countries are working out a deal regarding the airport, but the Taliban has rejected the plan and view it as a clear violation of the US-Taliban peace deal signed in Doha last year.

According to a report from Middle East Eye, the US and Turkey reached a mutual understanding on securing the airport and are close to finalizing the deal. The US and NATO will foot the bill for Turkey to stay. In an attempt to placate the Taliban, Turkey would promise not to conduct operations outside of the airport.

The US claims its plan to keep some troops in Afghanistan as a diplomatic presence only. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday that the withdrawal will end the US “combat mission” in Afghanistan. He said the US will leave “enough force posture to protect our diplomatic presence.” So far, the Pentagon has not said how many troops it plans to leave.

While the Pentagon is framing its post-withdrawal plans as merely the security of a diplomatic presence, the US will also continue providing funding and logistics to the Afghan military, fueling a proxy war. President Biden has earmarked $3.3 billion in funding for the Afghan military in the 2022 budget, an increase of $300 million from 2021.

An Ohio judge has a new requirement for defendants seeking probation; mandatory COVD-19 vaccination.

Judge Richard Frye of Franklin County said last week that he’s included the jab as a condition of release in three cases, after the defendants attributed their unvaccinated status to procrastination – as opposed to any philosophical, medical or religious objections.

“It occurred to me that at least some of these folks need to be encouraged not to procrastinate,” Frye told the Columbus Dispatch, adding “I think it’s a reasonable condition when we’re telling people to get employed and be out in the community.”

He declined to “speculate” what would happen if a defendant raised a medical, religious or philosophical exemption to vaccination, but said this is a different situation entirely than people who have simply put the matter off.

An example: a man named Cameron Stringer entered a guilty plea for one charge of improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle, for which he was sentenced to two years of probation (“community control,” as it’s known in Ohio).

Stringer must submit to random drug screening; avoid further legal trouble; return a firearm in question to its rightful owner; and obtain a COVID-19 vaccine within 30 days and provide proof to the Probation Department, court documents show. -Columbus Dispatch

It’s unknown whether other judges have been imposing similar vaccination requirements, however a spokesman for the state Supreme Court referred the Dispatch to a news report about a judge offering to shorten probation for those who obtain vaccines.

ACLU lobbyist Gary Daniels said the requirement ‘At a minimum, appears to be problematic.’

“It doesn’t have any real relationship to community control,” he said in a brief interview.

Judge Frye’s requirement comes as the rate of vaccinations has stalled out – with states and businesses offering cash incentives and entry into massive jackpots for those who get vaccinated.

According to the report, fewer than 48% of Ohioans have gotten at least one jab.

By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

We finally have a more comprehensive tally of the grotesquely oversized federal assistance dispensed under the guise of pandemic relief. It’s from CRFB, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and it’s broken down by states. It obliterates claims made by Illinois lawmakers that they’ve put this state on a sound fiscal path. Illinois, instead, was temporarily bailed out.

The total amount committed or disbursed to public and private sector recipients in Illinois is $138 billion and growing, the CRFB shows. Another $24 billion is allowed for Illinois under federal legislation already passed.

The current total of $138 billion may even shock many who have been following the federal bailout. That’s because most reporting to date has focused only on the direct aid to the state under the recent American Rescue Plan Act, which was only $8.1 billion. CRFB’s $138 billion total state aid includes distributed aid to both the public and private sector across Illinois:

• Loan and Grant Programs: $63.5 billion

• State & Local Funding: $16.2 billion

• Income Support: $24.3 billion

• Direct Payments: $10.0 billion

• Health Spending: $7.86 billion

• Other Spending: $4.01 billion

• Administrative: $5.95 billion

• Lending Facilities: $4.04 billion

• Other Loan Purchase Programs: $1.59 billion

The full breakdown is available on their site by clicking through for details.

The portion that went to the private sector bolstered the state by keeping tax receipts far higher than predicted. The direct aid to local governments also benefited the state by taking the pressure off on areas where expenses are shared, such as school funding and allocation of the Local Government Distributive Fund. The state is floating on federal money.

CRFB’s numbers blow to smithereens claims made Gov. J.B. Pritzker and state lawmakers that the State of Illinois has gotten its financial house back in order. The state’s new budget is a “giant step forward to true fiscal stability,” Pritzker says. He claims Illinois achieved “a level of fiscal prudence not seen in our state for two decades…We are also paying off pandemic borrowing early, we’re meeting our full pension obligation, and we’re saving taxpayers tens of millions of taxpayer dollars along the way.” One Democrat in the General Assembly after another has claimed basically the same.

That’s hogwash. The direct aid alone, to most states, including Illinois, exceeded any fiscal harm caused by the pandemic. We made that case earlier, as have many others.

The CRFB reaffirmed that and went further, addressing the impact of the indirect aid. Earlier this month it reported:

New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) for the month of April shows that disposable personal income (DPI) was 12.0 percent above pre-pandemic levels, or 3.8 percent above pre-pandemic levels excluding COVID relief. We have documented in a number of analyses how the $5.9 trillion ($5.2 trillion net) of enacted COVID relief to date has propelled personal income to record levels. [Emphasis theirs.]

It’s true for Illinois, too, which is clear from BEA numbers. Personal income for the state’s most recently reported quarter ending in March is 17% over pre-pandemic highs. That’s thanks to the tsunami of federal cash, not fiscal genius in Springfield.

Importantly, much more has yet to be included in CRFB numbers, as explained in their methodology page. Still to be added are most funds that go to individuals that are not currently tagged by state – including Economic Impact Payments, unemployment insurance benefits, and various tax breaks. CRFB updates its report weekly so its totals will grow. In addition, another $4 trillion of federal aid legislation in further aid looms – being pushed by the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats – which also isn’t in CRFB’s numbers!

CRFB is a credible, reputable, bipartisan source. Its board of directors includes Erskine Bowles, who served as director of the Small Business Administration under President Clinton; Mitch Daniels, former Republican governor of Indiana; Leon Panetta, who served in both the Clinton and Obama Administrations; and former Republican U.S. Senator Alan Simpson.

The only place I see where CRFB’s numbers might be overstated is their inclusion of $3.2 billion of loans from the Federal Reserve Bank under the Municipal Liquidity Facility, which is being paid back in next year’s budget. However, that’s tiny in relation to the whole. I suppose one might also recognize that much of the federal bailout has been lost to fraud. About $260 billion of PPP and other loans may be lost to fraud, according to a new report in Reason, and a full half of unemployment benefits probably went to fraudsters, according to a detailed Axios report.

Meanwhile, much of Illinois and the rest of the nation is crippled by a severe labor shortage. President Biden recently admitted, in essence, that the policy of paying people not to work is designed to force the private sector to increase wages to compete with that federal policy.

So, instead of wages being bid up as they should be – by a strong economy like we had before the pandemic – they are now to be bid up by gifts from Washington that taxpayers will have to repay through taxes or inflation.

Has any developed nation ever undertaken such madness? The insanity of American fiscal and monetary policy is matched only by the gall of Illinois politicians who are using it to claim they’ve put Illinois on the right track.

After launching a media crusade that bashed UNC as ‘racist’ for denying her tenure along with the offer of a lucrative teaching side gig, NYT writer and ‘1619 Project’ founder Nikole Hannah-Jones has succeeded in her quest to strong-arm her alma mater into granting her tenure even before she started her new gig as an assistant professor in the school’s journalism program, the Grey Lady reported.

A few months ago, Jones accepted a position as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and was expected to start July 1. Jones won a Pulitzer for her role in creating the project back in 2020.

However, her appointment triggered a backlash from conservatives, including a prominent donor to the school’s journalism program, which produces armies of graduates who are eventually recruited into the American business press.

While previous Knight chairs had been granted tenure, Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year contract with the possibility of tenure review. She formally requested tenure (despite having never taught a class in the role) but the UNC board refused to consider the request, effectively denying it. So, Jones to the media for assistance, slamming the school in an effort to pressure the board into acquiescence.

And on Thursday, just as she was beginning her new role, the school publicly announced that the board of trustees had agreed to grant Hannah-Jones tenure. Vice Chair Gene Davis told the NYT that by deciding to grant Hannah-Jones tenure “this board reaffirms that our university puts its highest values first.”

Hannah-Jones also released a statement, proclaiming “today’s outcome and the actions of the past month are about more than just me…This fight is about ensuring the journalistic and academic freedom of Black writers, researchers, teachers and students.”

While conservative donors reportedly complained privately about Hannah-Jones appointment, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s chief executive personally sent a letter to the board of trustees chairman voicing his support for Hannah-Jones’ tenure application.

Shortly before her teaching stint was set to begin, Hannah-Jones threatened the university, saying she would turn down the role if tenure wasn’t granted.

When the board of trustees voted on Hannah-Jones’ tenure on Wednesday, a group led by the campus’s Black Student Movement showed up to the meeting in support.

In the academic world, “tenure” is like a permanent contract that guarantees the educator employment. The agreements are extremely difficult to break, protecting the educator from being fired for anything other than egregious personal misconduct. Typically, the status is reserved for veteran educators, but as Hannah-Jones complained, her predecessors were all granted tenure immediately.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The unraveling of social cohesion has consequences. Once social cohesion unravels, the nation unravels.

My recent posts have focused on the systemic financial risks created by Federal Reserve policies that have elevated moral hazard (risks can be taken without consequence) and speculation to levels so extreme that they threaten the stability of the entire financial system.

These risks are well known, though largely ignored in the current speculative frenzy.

But there is another systemic risk which few if any see: the collapse of social cohesion.

President Carter was prescient in his understanding that a nation’s greatest strength is its social cohesion, a cohesion that America’s unprecedented wealth / income / power inequalities has undermined. Consider this excerpt from his 1981 Farewell Address:

“Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater even than the bounty of our material blessings.”

In other words, a nation’s strength flows not just from its material wealth but from its social cohesion–a term for something that is intangible but very real, something that doesn’t lend itself to quantification or tidy definitions.

Here is my definition:

Social cohesion is the glue binding the social order; it is the willingness of the citizenry to sacrifice individual gains for the common good.

Social cohesion is the result of the citizenry sharing a common purpose and identity and working toward the common good even at personal cost. Social cohesion arises from a national identity based on shared values and sacrifices.

To maintain social cohesion, opportunities to better their circumstances must be open to all (the social contract of social mobility) and sacrifices must be shared by the entire citizenry. If the privileged elites evade their share of sacrifice, social cohesion is lost and the entire social order unravels.

The glue binding the privileged elites to shared sacrifice is civic virtue, a moral code that demands elites devote a greater share of their own resources to the public good in exchange for their political and financial power.

Though no one dares confess this publicly, America is now a moral cesspool. As a result, the moral legitimacy of the nation’s leadership has been lost. Every nook and cranny of institutionalized America is dominated by self-interest, and much of the economy is controlled by profiteering monopolies and cartels which wield far more political power than the citizenry.

Civic virtue has been lost. What remains is elite self-interest masquerading as civic virtue.

In his Farewell Address, President Carter explained that “The national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together, and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility.”

Social cohesion, civic virtue and moral legitimacy are the foundation of every society, but they are especially important in composite states.

America is a composite state, composed of individuals holding a wide range of regional, ethnic, religious and class-based identities. The national identity is only one ingredient in a bubbling stew of local, state and regional identities, ethnic, cultural and religious identities, educational/alumni, professional and tradecraft identities, and elusive but consequential class-based identities.

Composite states are intrinsically trickier to rule, as there is no ethnic or cultural identity that unifies the populace. Lacking a national identity that supersedes all other identities, composite states must tread carefully to avoid fracturing into competing regional, ethnic or cultural identities.

Composite states must establish a purpose-based identity that is understood to demand shared sacrifice, especially in crisis. In the U.S., the national purpose has been redefined by the needs of the era, but never straying too far from these core unifying goals: defending the civil liberties of the citizenry from state interference, defending the nation from external aggressors, and serving the common good by limiting the power of special interests and privileged elites.

We’ve failed to limit the power of privileged elites, failed to demand greater sacrifices of the wealthy in exchange for power, and so the moral legitimacy of the regime has been lost. And with the ascendance of self-interest and the elite’s abandonment of sacrifice, social cohesion has been lost.

This loss is reflected in the bitter partisanship, the increasingly Orwellian attempts to control the mainstream and social media narratives, the debauchery of “expertise” as dueling “experts” vie for control, the fraying of social discourse, the substitution of virtue-signaling for actual civic virtue, the institutionalization of white-collar crime (collusion, fraud, embezzlement, etc.), the increasing reliance on Bread and Circuses (stimulus, Universal Basic Income) as real opportunity dissipates, and the troubling rise in shootings, crime, random violence and plummeting marriage and birth rates.

The unraveling of social cohesion has consequences. Once social cohesion unravels, the nation unravels.

\What’s the solution? At the national level, all that has been lost will have to be restored: civic virtue, moral legitimacy, the social contract of opportunity, shared sacrifice that falls most heavily on the wealthiest and most powerful, and a renewed national purpose centered on serving the common good.

Is such a restoration of moral legitimacy and shared purpose even possible? No one knows. If history is any guide, such a renewal is only possible after the empire of rampant self-interest implodes.

So what do we do in the meantime? Nurture our own social cohesion by living purposefully and sharing sacrifices and bounties with those we trust and admire–those in the lifeboat we chose to join.

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My recent books:

A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).