Month: November 2021

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

If you think the wealth tax is already in the rearview mirror, keep your eyes on the road.  The beta test is over, but that was just the nose in the tent phase.

Democrats knowledge of wealth is like the old saying about pornography, they know it when they see it (or in Hunter Biden’s case, when they film it).

But unlike porn, they don’t know where it comes from.  Also unlike porn, they know wealth has to be destroyed.

Because wealth is the thing that negates what they call equity.  Egalitarianism wasn’t enough.  Now we need equal outcomes where each player’s deficits are boosted to make results the same.

What better way to make the rich pay their “fair share” than by seizing the wealth they obviously must have stolen?  And using that to even the playing field?

It’s notable that instead of going after the two-and-twenty of the carried interest set, the Democrats sought a mark-to-market tax on equities (a tax on unrealized gains).  It was explained as a way to collect capital gains taxes earlier, in order to fund their hyperspend agenda.  But it was really a way to collect estate taxes early, as it was structurally designed to force the sale of assets and to destroy wealth.

The wealth tax failed this time because its mechanics were too dumb.  That’s what you get when you let Sen. B.S. (obsessed with millionaires and billionaires) and noted Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren write tax policy.

People asked:

What happens when the market declines?  Does the government cut everyone a check?  

How is something non-fungible like a piece of real estate valued?  Works of art? 

What if someone only has one non-financial asset that makes them wealthy?  

Do they have to sell it to pay the tax?  Take out loans?

This time they couldn’t answer any of those questions.  But the details don’t matter, the target does.

Real wealth endures and can maintain itself.  It is the essence of capitalism, which is why they hate it.  Universal, equitable toil is what the left wants for all of us.  Anything that allows someone to sit at home and contemplate the universe is anathema.  To the salt mines, comrades!

I jest of course, that’s gross exaggeration.  Since they don’t understand biology either, they hate salt too.

Unfocused Rage

The left lives in an 80s teen comedy, where hating Chad & Buffy is just so obvious it never has to be explained. But when you bring that zeitgeist into the policy-making sphere, your laws are still supposed to make (don’t laugh) at least a modicum of sense.

If wealth was just a pile of gold coins, it might make sense to let Fauxcohontas pilfer a few for the common good (you’ve got too many, give me one!).  Just to shut her up.

But real wealth has to be evaluated and if the methods to do so are not clear, or even agreed upon, how can the amount of tax be?

Calculating Wealth

Market capitalization is not really the amount of money in a market.  It’s an abstract concept that is pretty defective as a calculation of value.

It is the marginal price of a unit of account times the total circulating supply.

That means if we have 1,000 widgetcoins in circulation, and you offer me $2 for one of mine, the current widgetcoin market capitalization is $2,000.  

But if I have 700 widgetcoins do I really have $1,400 in wealth?  

It depends.  If the market is very liquid, and widgetcoins very desirable, maybe.  But if I dump 700 out of a total supply of 1,000 on the widgetcoin market, I will likely break that market.  The price of widgetcoins will probably approach $1 or lower pretty quick.

But Democrats can’t understand why a 2% tax on my $1,400 widgetcoin fortune is unworkable.  For some reason, it’s an unattainable level of knowledge for them and we will have no peace until the average person understands this.

A Class Study in Envy

Ask yourself why you know how much money Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have.  For years, the “richest person in the US” has been defined using “market cap” style math.  This was always so unimaginable numbers could be thrown about in the service of class warfare narratives.

It’s not that these people aren’t rich, it’s that their wealth is almost all in the stock of the companies they founded.

Saying Elon Musk is worth $300B ignores a few things.  Democrats think he has $300B in the bank.  Whereas in reality, Musk has a lot of Tesla stock.

The fact is Musk’s Tesla shares are not liquid in the same way as 1,000 shares of TSLA is in an average person’s IRA.

As an officer and over 10% holder, there are a variety of SEC and other regulatory issues Musk faces when selling stock.  In many companies, operating agreements further restrict how much founder’s stock can be sold in a period.  Vesting schedules for early employees add more restrictions.

The Democrats know all this.  They figure Musk can just take out loans against his shares and cut the Treasury a check.  And Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can.

But smaller founders who still qualify as “the evil rich” might not have that option.  And the more serious issue is that when you sell shares, you lose their votes.  And that is something company founders care deeply about, controlling the companies they started.

If you have to sell 2% of your wealth (e.g. shares) every year to pay the Bernie & Lizzie tax, how long before you lose control of your company?

What an added bonus for those who hate the productive.

Fake Voices & Fake Valuations

For a while we were asked to believe fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, of the occasionally mannish voice, was a billionaire.  At the time, that was held up as something to be lauded, a great achievement of female entrepreneurship.

But Theranos was never worth $9B, except in the minds of reporters and first year MBA graduates.  Serious investors don’t take early stage valuations seriously.  

If you raise $10M for 5% of your company, you don’t have $200M in the company treasury.  And a founder with 40% of the cap table doesn’t have $80M in the bank.

But this is the type of “wealth” the Democrats want to tax.  Because they’re not just insanely jealous, they’re also insanely stupid.

But are they really?

Just Stop Believin’

There has to come a time when we stop believing that no one has thought about the unintended consequences.  Their intent is to stop the creation of wealth.  And any narrative that serves that goal is on the table.

With every frantic drama the Democrats create, we need to ask:  why are they doing this?  If they care about the poor, why do they pass policies that create more poverty?  If they want to reduce the take of rent-seekers, why protect the tax structures that enrich them?  If they are motivated to share the wealth, why do they only seek to destroy that which creates it?  

The answer is always they just want to “get something done.”  Regardless of the cost.  

If you think a wealth tax won’t affect you because it’s only for the rich, don’t be surprised when they lower the bar and call it a savings tax next.  

The sad truth is that we live on a farm with people who want to eat the seed corn and if we don’t wake up to it, there’s not going to be a harvest in a couple seasons.

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By Philip Marey, senior US strategist at Rabobank

Tapering during a slowdown

• Although the economy has slowed down in the second half of the year, the FOMC is expected to announce the start of tapering at the November meeting. The Fed is likely to stress accumulated progress in the labor market and the transitory nature of supply side bottlenecks.

• The FOMC is expected to announce a fixed monthly taper schedule that would reduce net asset purchases by $10 billion Treasuries and $5 billion agency MBS.

• During the press conference Powell is likely to stress again that the end of tapering does not automatically mean the start of hiking. And that the high inflation readings are transitory.

Introduction

The US economy appears to have shifted to a slower pace of growth in the second half of the year as the impact of the fiscal stimulus measures is fading, the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread, and inflation has risen to 5.4% due to supply constraints. Nevertheless, the  FOMC is expected to make a formal announcement of the start of tapering on Wednesday.  Clearly, inconvenient timing, but the Fed is likely to stress accumulated progress in the labor market and the transitory nature of supply side bottlenecks.

Second half slowdown

We learned this week that GDP growth slowed down to only 2.0% in Q3, from 6.7% in Q2 and  6.3% in Q1. The impact of the COVID relief packages launched under the Trump and Biden administrations is fading, while we are still waiting for the Democrats to agree on a large (but shrinking) health, education and child care bill, and their approval of the bipartisan Senate bill on infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Delta variant continues to spread as vaccination rates have found an insufficient plateau. This is delaying the much-awaited return of labor supply that was supposed to start in September, as we discussed in Labor shortages: temporary or permanent? Consequently, employment growth slowed down to 194K in September, from 366K in August and 1091K in July. What’s more, global supply chains are in disarray and CPI inflation rose to 5.4% in September (year-on-year). Today, the PCE deflator, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, rose to 4.4% in September (year-on-year), from 4.2% in August. This is more than double the Fed’s 2.0% inflation target.

This is also having a negative impact on personal consumer spending, which slowed down to 1.6% in Q3, from 12.0% in Q2 and 11.4% in Q1. In fact, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNowcast actually put GDP growth in Q3 at 0.2% on October 27, the day before the official release by the BEA. This would have put the US economy close to stagnation. Although the BEA’s official estimate was 2.0%, we should see the FOMC statement acknowledge this slowdown in the growth of economic activity and employment.

An inconvenient time to taper

In the FOMC’s ideal world, they would step up the pace of asset purchases, instead of slowing them down, in case of an economic slowdown. However, in that world, inflation does not rise when the economy slows down either. Monetary policy is not very adequate if the adverse shock to the economy comes from the supply side. After all, monetary policy is aimed at influencing the demand side of the economy.

However, tapering is not tightening and there has been progress in the labor market since last year. The FOMC can point to the decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.8% in September, from 6.7% in December 2020, as proof of substantial progress in the labor market (Figure 1). What’s more, inflation has been rampant for half a year now. Perhaps transitory, but enough catching up in terms of average inflation targeting for now. In fact, the minutes of the September meeting showed that most participants remarked that the standard of “substantial further progress” had been met with regard to the Committee’s price-stability goal or that it was likely to be met soon. So the Fed can still make the case for the start of tapering. Let’s just hope the economy is not going to slide back further during the winter months.

Speeches and interviews with FOMC participants have confirmed that tapering is near. At the press conference on September 22 Powell stressed that the decision to start tapering was about accumulated progress in the labor market and that in his opinion the test was all but met. The FOMC speakers since that second disappointing Employment Report confirmed this interpretation. Fed Vice Chairman Clarida said that a gradual tapering of asset purchases that concludes around the middle of next year may soon be warranted. What’s more, according to the Minutes a number of participants indicated that they believed the test of “substantial further progress” toward maximum employment had already been met at the time of the September meeting. Finally, last week, Powell said he thinks it’s time to taper. So it is highly likely that the FOMC will announce tapering at the November meeting.

A fixed monthly taper schedule  

According to the minutes of the September 21-22 meeting of the FOMC, the Fed staff presented an illustrative path of tapering that was designed to be simple to communicate and entailed a gradual reduction in net asset purchases that would end around the middle of next year. Participants generally commented that the illustrative path provided a straightforward and appropriate template that policymakers might follow. Participants also noted that the Committee could adjust the pace of tapering if economic developments were to differ substantially from what they expected.

In contrast to 2014, the FOMC is considering a taper schedule that involves a fixed monthly reduction in asset purchases, by $10 billion in the case of Treasury securities and $5 billion in the case of agency MBS. Participants noted that if a decision to begin tapering occurred at the next meeting (November 2-3), the process of tapering could commence with the monthly purchase calendars beginning in either mid-November or mid-December. Taking this together, the mid-November start would mean that $70 billion Treasuries and $35 billion will be purchased between mid-November and mid-December, followed by a monthly reduction by $10 billion Treasuries and $5 billion agency MBS, ending the net asset purchases by mid-June next year. Analogously, a mid-December start of the process would imply a mid-July end. Such a monthly schedule would be set in advance, because the FOMC only meets about every six weeks. For example, there is no meeting after mid-December and before mid-January.  

This stands in contrast to the previous tapering process, carried out in 2014. Back then, the changes in the pace of monthly purchases only changed after FOMC meetings. With a fixed monthly schedule this taper process will be less flexible than last time, but the FOMC will still be able to change the schedule at any FOMC meeting if desired.

Conclusion

The FOMC meeting on November 2-3 is expected to conclude with a formal announcement of the start of tapering. There will be no update of the economic and rate projections (Table 1). During the press conference Powell is likely to stress again that the end of tapering does not automatically mean the start of hiking. And that the high inflation readings are transitory. We’ll put $5 in the Atlanta Fed’s swear jar.

There is one recurring problem with central planning: the greater the level of intervention, the worse and more widespread the unexpected adverse consequences. Just last week, when we reported that Beijing had imposed price controls on its coal rationing, we said that the problem with such explicit subsidies which create an artificially low price, is that they don’t address the underlying problem (too much demand, not enough supply), but instead accelerate hoarding and lead to a run on the artificially underpriced commodity, forcing spikes in another energy commodity while resulting in an even faster drain of the commodity in question, in this case coal. In essence, it’s like a giant game of “whack a mole”.

Just earlier today, we reported of precisely one such outcome when we discussed how China had inadvertently “sparked “Panic Buying” after telling households to stockpile food ahead of the winter.” This comes days after we reported that China’s coal and natgas energy crisis had quietly spread, with many gas stations across the country running out of diesel due to supply constraints caused by the surging demand for subsidized coal.

And now we have another example of central planning’s unintended whack-a-mole consequences: Bloomberg reports that domestic liquefied natural gas prices in China are surging, driven by soaring prices in the international market, adding pressure on downstream city gas distributors.

The national average price for the fuel, carried by trucks to factories or vehicle refueling stations, surged to a record 7,814 yuan per ton (about $26 per million British thermal units) on Monday, up almost 100% from a year ago, according to the Shanghai Petroleum & Natural Gas Exchange. In Beijing, prices saw a single-day jump of 1,000 yuan a ton on Monday, according to the CTL Group, a research unit of gas distributor ENN Group.

The price surge comes as importers try to compensate for the rising cost of LNG imports. While China regulates the price of natural gas sold through pipelines, trucked LNG can rise and fall based on market forces.

According to YuanTalks, Chai Shouping, chief financial officer of state-owned energy giant PetroChina, said at its earnings conference call on October 29 that, given the rising prices of LNG imports, PetroChina recorded a loss of 6.4 billion yuan for gas imports in the third quarter, bringing its total loss in the first three quarters of the year on gas imports to 3.2 billion yuan.

Chai said that “we will supply natural gas at contract prices to downstream companies, including those that have signed long-term supply agreements with us, but for other companies, we will have to sell gas at prices based on our purchases prices.”

While upstream resources companies plan to pass on rising costs to downstream companies, it’s difficult for downstream city gas distributers to pass on the rising prices to end users. Li Yalan, chairwoman of Beijing Gas Group, said at a gas industry forum on October 27 that problems faced by gas distributors this year are different from previous years and much more efforts are needed to purchase resources and balance resources.

“Surging gas prices are unlikely to be transmitted to end users and that is causing serious problems for gas distributors whose gas purchasing prices are higher than selling prices. Gas distributors have to absorb the burden themselves,” said Li, although we are confident that unless Beijing intervenes yet again, distributors will do everything in their power to make sure others foot the soaring bill.

Meanwhile, as reported previously, some factories in gas-reliant sectors such as ceramics and fertilizers have already had supplies restricted in order to conserve fuel for home heating. Those that can get it will pay more – the cost for gas feedstock at ceramics factories in Guangdong and Jiangxi have nearly doubled, according to industry publication Ceramic Information.

The gas surge is coming just as a jump in coal prices is relaxing. Action by China’s authorities to boost output has helped ease a crunch on supply that’s contributed to power shortages and crimped output in some key industries.

Thermal coal futures on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange fell 2.8% to close at 891.8 yuan ($139.3) on Tuesday, paring an earlier drop of as much as 8.4% that brought the price to the lowest since August.

Alas, as the LNG example shows, unless Beijing successfully manages to plug all hole where the “mole” can emerge, this strategy merely exacerbates an already unprecedented crisis, and the longer the state intervenes in price discovery the worse the final outcome.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will take up arguably the oldest and most controversial right in our history.

New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen is the first major gun rights case in over ten years to come before the Supreme Court and it has the makings of a major gun rights victory in the making.

The case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” New York wants to exercise discretion in deciding who needs to carry guns in public while gun owners believe that the law flips the constitutional presumption in favor of such a right.

There are few constitutional rights that have been debated so long in this country as gun rights. Indeed, before other Englishmen were given a written guarantee of the right to bear arms, colonists in Virginia in 1607 were given such a written guarantee by the Crown.  Since that time, the right to bear arms has been an engrained part of our culture and ultimately our Constitution.

Despite that history, the meaning of the right has remained the subject of heated debate. That is evident from the fact that it was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court finally recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

This is actually the second time in two years that the New York State Rifle Association has come knocking on the door of the Supreme Court. The Association previously challenged a New York law that imposed stringent conditions on the ability of gun owners to even transport their guns outside of their homes. The law was viewed by some of us as unconstitutional under existing case law, but New York politicians insisted that it would be defended all the way up to the Supreme Court.  However, when the Court called their bluff and accepted the case, those politicians quickly changed the law and pulled the case before the Court could rule.

The bait-and-switch incensed members of the Court who delayed in the dismissal of the case.  Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas specifically called out New York for “manipulating” the docket by withdrawing an unconstitutional law just before a final opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined in the condemnation and added menacingly that “some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.”

They ultimately did precisely that and took another case by the very same plaintiffs: the New York State Rifle Association.

The current court membership is arguably the strongest Second Amendment bench in decades. That includes Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a strong defense of the Second Amendment defense as an appellate judge.  While it is always dangerous to predict outcomes before the Court, this case was accepted with a likely intent to reverse the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (which also upheld the earlier restrictive law).

With lower courts chipping away at its prior precedent, the Court seems poised to push back with a case that brings greater clarity and support for the right to bear guns in public. Many Second Amendment advocates are encouraging the Court to pull back on language from Heller that has been cited mantra-like by lower courts limiting the scope of this right. Many point to the court’s statement in Heller, which acknowledged that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It then listed possible “sensitive places” for denying permits to former felons.

The Court is likely to continue to recognize reasonable limitations, including possibly some location-based limits. However, it may create a clear presumption in favor of law-bidding citizens to bear arms outside of the home. The natural default under the Second Amendment in favor of gun owners is likely to be strengthened.

The showdown with New York and the Second Circuit in that sense was merely delayed, but not forgotten by the Court. Ironically, the earlier law would have presented a narrower platform for reconsidering the Second Amendment. By gaming the system a year ago, New York may have delivered a far greater opportunity for Second Amendment advocates in the case.

Of course, the Court could have accepted the case to simply amplify its agreement with the Second Circuit, but I would not count on it. It is like the scene in Braveheart when William Wallace said that he was going to “pick a fight” with the British when others were looking for a compromise. That came as little surprise to his main lieutenant Hamish who shrugged and added “Well, we didn’t get dressed up for nothing.”

It’s yet another example of “do as I say, not as I do” when it comes to the hysterical Covid response from those on the left. Today’s reminder comes from CNN’s Don Lemon, who appeared to have been caught on video vacationing in Florida, maskless. 

This is, of course, the very same Don Lemon who was recently caught pushing the outright lie that podcast host Joe Rogan was using an “unproven de-worming drug” to treat Covid.

In keeping with his excellence in journalistic integrity, Lemon, who has advocated for wearing a mask and routinely railed against the state of Florida on his show, appears to have been caught on video vacationing with a male companion, in Florida, without wearing a mask.

One bystander caught that Lemon was on the premises and got him on video.

“I wanna thank you. Don Le-moan, right?” the woman filming says to Lemon, while he gets up from his outdoor chair with his companion. 

“I wanna thank you. Thank you so much. And you’re in the great state of Florida,” the videographer continues, tongue-in-cheek.

Lemon begins to pack up his belongings and walk away when the woman says sarcastically: “I hope you guys enjoy it. You can enjoy it. Thank you for exposing everything. Cause we love you in Florida.”

Don Lemon enjoys being maskless in the great free state of Florida pic.twitter.com/pOOj9IbIMI

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) November 1, 2021

A friend of the videographers’ can be heard chuckling in the background.

It’s yet one more item to add to the list of liberal hypocrisy in how they want you to handle Covid, versus how they go about it themselves. 

Lemon did seem like he was in a rush to leave. We wonder if he had dinner reservations that night with Gavin Newsom, or maybe a salon appointment with Nancy Pelosi that he had to get to. 

Authored by Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea via TK News,

On April 28th of this year, Joe Biden gave one of the first big speeches of his presidency, addressing a Joint Session of Congress.

“I stand here tonight, just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration,” he said.

“One hundred days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.”

He went on:

“The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

Presidential speeches are more like corporate productions than individual literary efforts. A key aide or team of aides may write the first draft — adviser Mike Donilon is said to have authored this one — and from there, other cooks in the kitchen fight over the ingredients.

One wants to remove a line, a second tries to add one, and a third will battle over run time or location. According to speechwriter David Frum, George Bush’s famed “Axis of Evil” line was also delivered to a Joint Session, because Karl Rove believed his boss was better before audiences than before “the silent eye of a television camera.”

No one has said where exactly the line “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” came from. None other than Thomas Friedman in the fall of 2020 wrote a pre-election column saying America was in “more danger than it has been since the Civil War,” and it’s possible a political aide spotted the line and liked it. Certainly, however, it didn’t become journalistic cliché until Biden’s April 28th speech.

News directors and editors once needed stiff nudges to repeat a president’s words verbatim, not just because it’s embarrassing to take dictation from a politician, but because it was bad business to do it for free. If politicians wanted you to buy the “Axis of Evil” or “the end of welfare as we know it,” that’s what paid political advertising was for. In the Trump years, however, it’s become almost a daily practice for commentators to fob off White House-crafted political messaging as their own thoughts.

I feel bad picking on old friend Chris Hayes, among other things because he did come up with his own, more generalized “since the Civil War” analogy before Biden’s speech. Still, watch in the clip above how he pauses and adds an “arguably, probably” in the middle of a now-almost-verbatim recitation of Biden’s line — “the worst attack on American Democracy, arguably, probably, since the Civil War” — as if he’s coming up with the phrase in the moment, and not repeating exact presidential language from six months before.

This disease has spread rapidly in the last year or so, when phrases like “transformative president” and “pandemic of the unvaccinated” have begun traveling from White House transcripts to teleprompters facing anchors on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox with humorous alacrity. In fact, “the worst… since the Civil War” was such a success in flowing from Biden’s head to the lips of people like Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo that, as noted in Matt Orfalea’s terrific compilation above, it’s been deployed for rare double-duty as a political cliché. It’s currently in circulation describing both the January 6th riots and the efforts by Republican state officials to change voting rights laws, and has even become a bit of a crossover hit.

“Since the Civil War” has had a long enough life-cycle to be captured by the Hate Inc. news-biz dynamic, commoditized for blue and red audiences. As Democrats anxious for hyperbolic interpretations of Republican horribleness gobbled the term up on CNN and MSNBC, Fox viewers have been treated to the same idea in reverse. Laura Ingraham interviewed Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago, and he used the phrase to describe the vaccine mandate, Merrick Garland’s memo on schools and parents, and other forms of ostensible government overreach.

“Not since the Civil War,” Gingrich said, “have we seen this kind of anti-citizen behavior…”

Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, counter-riffed Biden by claiming the Immigration Act of 1965 was in fact the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War:

Tucker: Really? The worst attack on our democracy in a 160 years? How about the immigration act of 1965? pic.twitter.com/ibftJ7ofnE

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 30, 2021

Of course, “since the Civil War” is absurd in any direction. None of these things were worse “attacks” on American democracy than Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the sinking of the Lusitania, or a dozen other blood-soaked episodes in our history. Also, no matter what your views of Republican voting-rights laws, no rational person would define them as more draconian or extreme than Jim Crow, Japanese internment, or any of the War on Terror initiatives, and that’s just for starters.

Pundits only just finished telling us a Russian cyber campaign was our new Pearl Harbor (in fact, the chief prosecutor of Robert Mueller’s probe, Andrew Weissman, told us it was worse than Pearl Harbor). The Boston Globe said Charlottesville was literally Fort Sumter. Even Trump’s election win in 2016 was deemed by the BBC to be possibly the “end of liberal democracy.” At least in those cases, though, pundits wrote their own hyperbole. It’s more embarrassing when the White House writes it for you.

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Recent Western media reports have underscored that China emits more greenhouse gas than all other developed nations combined, so naturally many are asking what’s the point of the ongoing Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow if the world’s number one polluter is not present. 

Over 120 heads of state were present at the first day on Monday – when ‘high level’ opening speeches were given (and President Biden was caught snoozing) – but China’s President Xi Jinping stayed home, and merely submitted a dry written statement published to the conference’s website.

But on Tuesday China is saying that President Xi was never so much as offered an option of addressing world leaders via live video link. China’s Foreign Ministry told reporters in a press briefing that Xi was never provided the option to attend virtually, apparently after it was sought as a possibility. 

“As I understand it, the conference organizers did not provide the video link method,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.

The UK government later confirmed this, with a spokesperson cited in Reuters saying that an intentioned lack of a virtual attendance option was meant to encourage coming in person. The COP26 conference only offered the possibility of a recorded address, such as the Pope gave, or the submission of a written statement. 

his after Biden himself as well as US officials have taken swipes at both Beijing and Moscow for lack of participation by their top leaders… 

“Russia and … China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate. And there’s a reason why people should be disappointed in that,” Biden said Sunday just ahead of the conference. “I found it disappointing myself.”

They are laughing at you. The 400 private jets used by world ‘leaders’ to get to #COP26 pumped out 13,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet they want you to stop eating meat, to stop going on holiday, to buy a new electric car, & to spend thousands of pounds on new boilers. pic.twitter.com/Phj1wpQvKJ

— Matthew Firth (@MatthewPFirth) November 1, 2021

It appears that instead the UK and UN organizers wish to see an armada of hundreds of fuel-guzzling and gas emitting private jets descending on Glasgow airport. 

For China’s part, Xi’s written statement urged all developed countries to “provide support to help developing countries do better” while issuing the usual platitudes about jointly tackling the “climate challenge” and speeding up green initiatives – but notably absent were any definitive pledges sought by the West. 

Meanwhile, after on Monday falling asleep during opening speeches, President Biden took a departing shot at China during his final Tuesday presser before returning to Washington…

“It’s a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership mantle?” Biden told reporters of Xi’s absence.

BREAKING: U.S. President Joe Biden just slammed China for “not showing up” at COP26 at his presser before departing the summit.

“It’s a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership mantle?” pic.twitter.com/NSWxmLeQ3J

— Jack Hazlewood (@JackHHazlewood) November 2, 2021

Authored by Tammy Hung via The Epoch Times,

Leaders of a migrant caravan consisting of thousands of migrants have rejected humanitarian visas for some travelers as they continued the march towards the United States or Mexico city.

The Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) said that it offered humanitarian visas to pregnant women and children in the caravan but was rejected by leaders of the caravan, which set off from southern Mexico last week, according to Fox News.

The visas last a year and grant migrants access to public services like healthcare, as well as the ability to work, Reuters reported.

The caravan of migrants mainly consisted of South Americans, Central Americans, and Haitians. It left the town of Huehuetán in the south of Mexico on Oct. 23.

Organizers Luis Rey García Villagrán and Irineo Mújica had migrants sign up with QR codes to join the convoy.

In an interview with Reuters, Mújica said that many caravan members were distrustful of the migration officials due to what he described as broken promises in the past, such as arrests and deportations.

Garcia told Fox News that the caravan was approximately 4,000 strong with more than 400 children between the ages 7-18, and 100 babies under the age of one. In addition, 65 pregnant women (three being more than eight months pregnant) and four wheelchair bound migrants had joined the caravan.

Having travelled 60 miles, many caravan members have reportedly developed foot injuries, respiratory problems, and infections.

Volunteer doctor Kabir Sanchez told Reuters that “more than 50 percent of the people in the caravan are sick.”

The INM had also reported six cases of dengue amongst members of the caravan, including five children.

Sanchez also said that caravan members had possible cases of COVID-19 but were not confirmed with tests.

The Biden administration had blamed root causes in Central and South America as factors causing the recent influx in illegal immigrants.

Republicans, on the other hand, blamed the border-crisis on the Biden administration’s decision to halt the border wall construction, and to reinstitute the Obama administration’s catch-and-release policy.

Just last month, The Washington Times reported that catch-and-release numbers increased a whopping 430,000 percent from August 2020 to August 2021 at the US-Mexico border.

Catch and release allows illegal aliens to be released into the country after being arrested by border patrol agents. Under the conditions of their release, these illegal immigrants are expected to appear for a court hearing at a later date.

However, the Center for Immigration Studies, which describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit research organization,” found that about half of these released illegal immigrants failed to appear to court between 2015 and 2017 (pdf). In 2017, 43 percent did not show up to their court date.