another site
8/22/1998: On August 22, 1998, Barry Black led a Ku Klux Klan rally in Carroll County, Virginia. The Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of his prosecution for cross burning in Virginia v. Black (20030.
The post Today in Supreme Court History: August 22, 1998 appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/m3YUC0L
via IFTTT
It’s no secret that public schools are battlegrounds over classroom bias and policy preferences. The conflicts escalate as time goes on, hurting students and teachers alike. Many families have a solution: they want out, so they can guide their own kids’ education without having to fight over ideology and procedures. But hardliners who favor government control are trying to prevent their exit. Those blocking school doors need to be pushed out of the way so children can learn.
“Partisan rifts widen, perceptions of school quality decline,” reads the headline on the results of the latest survey of public opinion by Harvard University’s Education Next. “Using Education Next survey data from 2007 to 2022, we reveal that the average difference in opinion between the two major parties has grown larger on many of the items we have tracked over the years. Second, we are witnessing the emergence of new issues that reflect exceptionally large partisan splits. Over the past two years, we have introduced questions about schools’ responses to the pandemic and recent debates about how to teach about the role of race in America’s past and present. In contrast to many of the education-policy topics that we have explored in prior iterations of the survey, respondents’ positions on these issues appear to map more directly to their partisan identities.”
“To say that the politics of education is increasingly partisan is not to say that it is exclusively partisan,” authors David. M. Huston, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West emphasize. But among the biggest splits are highly partisan divides over COVID-19 response and controversial interpretations of history.
“About 65 percent of Democrats support face mask mandates in schools, with 15 percent opposed. Among Republicans, the breakdown is essentially the reverse: 19 percent in support and 63 percent opposed,” the report notes. “Fully 54 percent of Democrats think their local schools are placing too little emphasis on racial matters, compared to 10 percent of Republicans. Meanwhile, 51 percent of Republicans think there is currently too much emphasis on racial matters, compared to 9 percent of Democrats.”
“Despite the education-policy community’s long history of trying to keep political pressures at arm’s length, public opinion on education issues seems to be increasingly drawn into the powerful current of partisanship in contemporary American politics,” the authors add.
Unsurprisingly, a RAND study earlier this year found that COVID-19 response and “the intrusion of political issues and opinions” including the treatment of racial matters are major job-related stressors. “Educators who reported being harassed about politicized issues experienced lower levels of well-being and worse perceptions of their school or district climate; they were more likely to cite the politicization of their profession as a reason for considering leaving their jobs.”
It’s not a shock that intractable disagreements over what is to be taught and the conditions under which teaching occurs have many educators at the end of their ropes. So, wouldn’t it make sense to stop shoehorning people with incompatible preferences into the same institutions and let them pick education approaches that work for their kids?
Hey! That’s something on which people agree across the political spectrum.
Education Next‘s survey found that while Americans’ perceptions of public schools have been slipping since 2019, “support for charter schools ticked back up to 45 percent after lows of 39 percent in 2017 and 41 percent in 2021. Similarly, support for both universal vouchers (50 percent) and vouchers for low-income families (48 percent) has recovered from its 2021 levels (45 percent and 43 percent, respectively). Meanwhile, scholarships for low-income families funded by tax credits, which had 55 percent support in 2017 and 56 percent support a year ago, now enjoy the backing of 61 percent of Americans. … Fifty-four percent of Americans favor allowing parents to homeschool their children, compared to 45 percent in 2017.”
Every possible educational reform is gaining support while traditional public schools lose esteem. Many of these reforms make it clear that education funding is for students, not for government-run institutions. They ensure that money follows kids to their classes, wherever they are. For example, Arizona recently expanded education savings accounts (ESA) so families can choose how to use some of the taxes they pay.
“Families would receive over $6,500 per year per child for private school, homeschooling, ‘learning pods,’ tutoring, or any other kinds of educational service that would best fit their students’ needs,” comments Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, which advocated for passage. More money is available for children with special needs.
Nobody has to participate; Arizonans can keep their kids in traditional public schools without making any effort. Nevertheless, the program is popular.
“IMPORTANT! Due to high volume, you may receive an error message when trying to create an ADE Connect account. Please try again later,” reads the Arizona Department of Education’s Empowerment Scholarship Account application page as of August 21.
That escape hatch from a public school system for which people have diminishing respect and eroding patience may excite the public but is unacceptable to defenders of the old institutions.
“ESA vouchers take more money away from our already underfunded schools,” complains Save Our Schools Arizona, which believes that education funds belong to government buildings and employees, not to the children seeking education and whose families pay taxes. The organization is funding a petition drive to overturn ESA expansion.
Maybe anti-choice activists just like conflict. If successful, they’ll trap families that can’t afford tuition on top of taxes in institutions they don’t respect, that show every sign of continuing as political and cultural battlegrounds, and in which some teachers feel compelled by endless disagreements to quit. That guarantees a future of escalating disputes that interfere with learning and create unpleasant environments for everybody. To judge by their conduct, anti-choice activists are cruelly wedded to encouraging combat in the classroom.
That’s why anti-choice activists need to lose, so children and families can win. In a country in which people increasingly disagree on a host of issues, government-controlled schools are destined to be battlefields so long as we try to force people with clashing views to share them. Rather than settle for partisan conflict and perceptions of declining quality, we can escape classroom battles by letting people leave the battleground.
The post Americans Increasingly See Political Polarization Overtaking Public Education appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/H3OyQTk
via IFTTT
When Florida holds its primary elections on Tuesday, the Senate races are likely to be the least dramatic: The incumbent, Sen. Marco Rubio, is running unopposed in the Republican primary, and Rep. Val Demings, who currently represents the state’s 10th Congressional District, is polling at 80 percent in the Democratic primary.
Despite the relatively low stakes, the race is still likely to garner attention: Rubio, who ran for president in 2016, faces a tough potential opponent in Demings, who was famously on the short list for President Joe Biden’s potential 2020 running mates. A University of North Florida poll this month showed Demings with a four-point lead over Rubio, 48–44. And in an election year when Democrats could defy historical trends and keep control of the Senate, every close race will be under intense scrutiny.
One person who is counting on that extra attention is Dennis Misigoy, the only Senate candidate from Florida’s Libertarian Party. Speaking with Reason earlier this month, he made the case for a third-party candidacy. He also criticized both of his likely future opponents, but reserved particularly strong words for the incumbent.
“Rubio is pretty uniquely bad,” says Misigoy. “Not just in the sense of being unpopular and easy to dislike, but policy-wise: This is a guy who got elected as part of that Tea Party wave back in 2010, and…when you listen to him talk about dealing with issues of economic policy, it’s all central economic planning, it’s not free markets.”
In an age when socialism seems ascendant among younger Democrats, and Republicans position themselves in full-throated opposition, Misigoy sees little difference between Rubio and progressive icons like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.).
“I would characterize him, by the Republican standards, as a socialist. Is he a socialist by the means of, ‘seize the means of production and nationalize everything,’ socialist? No. But is he socialist by the ‘Obamacare is socialist’ standard? I’d say, yeah.”
Not that Rubio is necessarily an outlier in the GOP, in Misigoy’s view. “Republicans have long presented themselves as the champions of fiscal responsibility, smaller government, and whatnot,” he says. “I really got turned off to them in the first part of the 2000s…George W. Bush was president for eight years. For six of those eight years you had Republican majorities in Congress, and what’d they do with the spending, and the growth of government?”
Misigoy is the son of immigrants, including a mother whose family fled Cuba immediately after the 1959 revolution in which Fidel Castro overthrew military dictator Fulgencio Batista and installed a Communist regime. Notably, Rubio initially claimed the same about his own parents and has used his family’s experience as fuel for his own anti-Communism. But in 2011, The Washington Post reported that Rubio’s family had actually left in 1956, not as economic refugees but as traditional immigrants. (Misigoy clarifies, “I don’t begrudge anyone for being an economic refugee, but obviously when you then take [such] different positions on immigration policy, then there’s a different wrinkle to that.”)
In contrast to both Republicans and Democrats, Misigoy hopes to bring an actual sense of fiscal restraint to the Senate. In 2016, he ran successfully for a spot on the board of supervisors for a Miami-Dade County Community Development District (CDD). A CDD, as defined under Florida law, is a “local unit of special-purpose government” formed for “specialized functions.” Misigoy says the experience gave him a sense of what a term in office would really be like as a third-party candidate: “I spent two years where any motion I made died for lack of a second, unless it was to adjourn a meeting or to approve minutes.”
But in leading by example, he says he was able to convince other like-minded citizens to run for office as well. “We had a new majority after the 2018 midterms, and we were able to do a lot of things differently: We had a slate of wasteful projects, [and] we were able to save the district 78 percent of what had been allocated for those projects.”
Misigoy has a lengthy list of policy proposals, from a more restrained foreign policy to repealing the Davis-Bacon and Jones Acts. But speaking to Reason, he focused largely on inflation and government spending.
“The most widespread negative impact [of government policy] is inflation. Inflation is affecting everybody in this country” in the form of higher prices, he explains, “and all of that is the consequence of the monetary policy and the fact, in particular in the COVID era, that we’ve been printing trillions” of dollars.
Misigoy accuses both parties of going along with it, either with the “tacit approval” of preserving the status quo, or more overtly, as when Demings tweeted in February that “the Federal Reserve is the most important institution in America in the fight against inflation.“
“I got a laugh out of [that],” says Misigoy. “Obviously, we have a little bit of a different perspective: The monetary policy we have is causing all these problems…Creating money doesn’t mean that you’re actually creating something new, it’s stealing the wealth from the money people already have in circulation…Their bank account looks the same, but the value is not the same.”
“We want the market to be as efficient as it can be, because an efficient market delivers goods and services to people at the lowest cost possible, lowers the cost of living, overall that makes it easier for people to live, and it leaves more capital left over for people to create new things that improve people’s lives further.”
This article includes reporting from Alyssa Varas.
The post Marco Rubio's Libertarian Challenger Blasts the Senator as a 'Socialist' appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/yioa2bU
via IFTTT
Nikki Fried, the only Democrat among Florida’s statewide elected officials, might seem like an unlikely champion of the Second Amendment. But as Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer affairs, Fried oversees medical marijuana and concealed carry permits, both of which are affected by a federal law that prohibits cannabis consumers from owning guns. That ban, Fried argues in a federal lawsuit she filed in April, is illegal and unconstitutional.
“I’m suing the Biden Administration because people’s rights are being limited,” Fried announced on Twitter. “Medical marijuana is legal. Guns are legal. This is about people’s rights and their freedoms to responsibly have both.”
In addition to her Second Amendment claim, Fried argues that the ban on gun possession by marijuana users violates a congressional spending rider that bars the Justice Department from interfering with state medical marijuana programs. Florida, where voters approved medical use of cannabis in 2016, is one of 37 states with such programs. Fried is asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida for an injunction barring federal officials from enforcing the gun restrictions against “state medical marijuana patients.”
Under current law, cannabis consumers who receive or possess firearms are committing a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Falsely denying marijuana use on the form required to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer is another felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. The form includes a warning that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”
In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that blocking gun sales to people who have medical marijuana cards is consistent with the Second Amendment because “empirical data and legislative determinations support a strong link between drug use and violence.” That decision, Fried argues, suffered from “a thin and stale factual record” and ignored a 2013 study commissioned by the Office of National Drug Control Policy that found “marijuana use does not induce violent crime.” She says “the stated factual basis” for the 9th Circuit’s ruling and similar decisions, “at least as it relates to state-law-abiding medical marijuana patients, is obsolete and without scientific support.”
Fried will be running against Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, if she wins the Democratic nomination this August. But on this issue, they see eye to eye. The governor’s office said he agrees that “Floridians should not be deprived of a constitutional right for using a medication lawfully.”
The post Florida Democrat Challenges the Gun Ban for Marijuana Users appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/PQGfWJH
via IFTTT
8/22/1998: On August 22, 1998, Barry Black led a Ku Klux Klan rally in Carroll County, Virginia. The Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of his prosecution for cross burning in Virginia v. Black (20030.
The post Today in Supreme Court History: August 22, 1998 appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/m3YUC0L
via IFTTT
It’s no secret that public schools are battlegrounds over classroom bias and policy preferences. The conflicts escalate as time goes on, hurting students and teachers alike. Many families have a solution: they want out, so they can guide their own kids’ education without having to fight over ideology and procedures. But hardliners who favor government control are trying to prevent their exit. Those blocking school doors need to be pushed out of the way so children can learn.
“Partisan rifts widen, perceptions of school quality decline,” reads the headline on the results of the latest survey of public opinion by Harvard University’s Education Next. “Using Education Next survey data from 2007 to 2022, we reveal that the average difference in opinion between the two major parties has grown larger on many of the items we have tracked over the years. Second, we are witnessing the emergence of new issues that reflect exceptionally large partisan splits. Over the past two years, we have introduced questions about schools’ responses to the pandemic and recent debates about how to teach about the role of race in America’s past and present. In contrast to many of the education-policy topics that we have explored in prior iterations of the survey, respondents’ positions on these issues appear to map more directly to their partisan identities.”
“To say that the politics of education is increasingly partisan is not to say that it is exclusively partisan,” authors David. M. Huston, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West emphasize. But among the biggest splits are highly partisan divides over COVID-19 response and controversial interpretations of history.
“About 65 percent of Democrats support face mask mandates in schools, with 15 percent opposed. Among Republicans, the breakdown is essentially the reverse: 19 percent in support and 63 percent opposed,” the report notes. “Fully 54 percent of Democrats think their local schools are placing too little emphasis on racial matters, compared to 10 percent of Republicans. Meanwhile, 51 percent of Republicans think there is currently too much emphasis on racial matters, compared to 9 percent of Democrats.”
“Despite the education-policy community’s long history of trying to keep political pressures at arm’s length, public opinion on education issues seems to be increasingly drawn into the powerful current of partisanship in contemporary American politics,” the authors add.
Unsurprisingly, a RAND study earlier this year found that COVID-19 response and “the intrusion of political issues and opinions” including the treatment of racial matters are major job-related stressors. “Educators who reported being harassed about politicized issues experienced lower levels of well-being and worse perceptions of their school or district climate; they were more likely to cite the politicization of their profession as a reason for considering leaving their jobs.”
It’s not a shock that intractable disagreements over what is to be taught and the conditions under which teaching occurs have many educators at the end of their ropes. So, wouldn’t it make sense to stop shoehorning people with incompatible preferences into the same institutions and let them pick education approaches that work for their kids?
Hey! That’s something on which people agree across the political spectrum.
Education Next‘s survey found that while Americans’ perceptions of public schools have been slipping since 2019, “support for charter schools ticked back up to 45 percent after lows of 39 percent in 2017 and 41 percent in 2021. Similarly, support for both universal vouchers (50 percent) and vouchers for low-income families (48 percent) has recovered from its 2021 levels (45 percent and 43 percent, respectively). Meanwhile, scholarships for low-income families funded by tax credits, which had 55 percent support in 2017 and 56 percent support a year ago, now enjoy the backing of 61 percent of Americans. … Fifty-four percent of Americans favor allowing parents to homeschool their children, compared to 45 percent in 2017.”
Every possible educational reform is gaining support while traditional public schools lose esteem. Many of these reforms make it clear that education funding is for students, not for government-run institutions. They ensure that money follows kids to their classes, wherever they are. For example, Arizona recently expanded education savings accounts (ESA) so families can choose how to use some of the taxes they pay.
“Families would receive over $6,500 per year per child for private school, homeschooling, ‘learning pods,’ tutoring, or any other kinds of educational service that would best fit their students’ needs,” comments Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, which advocated for passage. More money is available for children with special needs.
Nobody has to participate; Arizonans can keep their kids in traditional public schools without making any effort. Nevertheless, the program is popular.
“IMPORTANT! Due to high volume, you may receive an error message when trying to create an ADE Connect account. Please try again later,” reads the Arizona Department of Education’s Empowerment Scholarship Account application page as of August 21.
That escape hatch from a public school system for which people have diminishing respect and eroding patience may excite the public but is unacceptable to defenders of the old institutions.
“ESA vouchers take more money away from our already underfunded schools,” complains Save Our Schools Arizona, which believes that education funds belong to government buildings and employees, not to the children seeking education and whose families pay taxes. The organization is funding a petition drive to overturn ESA expansion.
Maybe anti-choice activists just like conflict. If successful, they’ll trap families that can’t afford tuition on top of taxes in institutions they don’t respect, that show every sign of continuing as political and cultural battlegrounds, and in which some teachers feel compelled by endless disagreements to quit. That guarantees a future of escalating disputes that interfere with learning and create unpleasant environments for everybody. To judge by their conduct, anti-choice activists are cruelly wedded to encouraging combat in the classroom.
That’s why anti-choice activists need to lose, so children and families can win. In a country in which people increasingly disagree on a host of issues, government-controlled schools are destined to be battlefields so long as we try to force people with clashing views to share them. Rather than settle for partisan conflict and perceptions of declining quality, we can escape classroom battles by letting people leave the battleground.
The post Americans Increasingly See Political Polarization Overtaking Public Education appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/H3OyQTk
via IFTTT
Zinc, Aluminum Smelters Shuttered In Europe Due To Soaring Power Prices
Second-round effects from Europe’s astronomical power price increases are coming in hot and heavy.
With both French and German 1-year ahead baseload electricity prices hitting levels which mean only a handful of Europeans will be able to afford power in one year (and the rest will soon be short a kidney)…
… Europe’s energy crisis has claimed another victim in the power-hungry metals industry, after Norsk Hydro said it planned to shutter an aluminum smelter in Slovakia at the end of next month, Bloomberg reports.
With Aluminum one of the most energy-intensive metals to produce, the closure of the Slovalco facility adds to growing signs of stress in Europe’s industrial economy as power prices surge to record highs. It’s why Hydro and others are now moving to shut down plants entirely. The region had already lost about half of its zinc and aluminum smelting capacity during the past year, mainly as producers dialed back output.
Hydro, Slovalco’s majority owner, said the closure was a response to adverse conditions including “high electricity prices, which show no signs of improvement in the short term.” The smelter was running at 60% of its 175,000-ton annual capacity and would suffer substantial losses if it continued operations beyond 2022, the Norwegian firm said. On Tuesday, Hydro said production at another aluminum plant in Norway would be impacted by a strike starting Aug. 22, adding to the strain on supplies.
The news came one day after Zinc prices jumped after one of Europe’s largest zinc smelters said it too would halt production next month as the continent’s energy crisis threatens to hobble heavy industries.
The Budel smelter in the Netherlands – controlled by Trafigura Group’s Nyrstar – will be placed on care and maintenance from Sept. 1 “until further notice,” according to a company statement. Zinc trading on the London Metal Exchange jumped as much as 7.2% to the highest intraday level in two months as traders priced in even tighter supply.
Earlier this month, top zinc producer Glencore Plc warned that Europe’s energy crisis posed a substantial threat to supply. Smelters across the region are barely turning a profit and the Nyrstar plant, which accounts for about 2% of global output, has been operating at a reduced rate since the fourth quarter of last year.
The decline in European zinc production has seen local LME stockpiles fall close to zero this year, while global inventories remain near the lowest in more than two years. “There will be a bit of capacity juggling going on,” said Tom Price, an analyst at Liberum Capital. “If the EU needs their metal, they will probably have to import more semi-refined material or the metal itself.”
Europe’s energy crisis has sparked increasingly volatile trading on the London Metal Exchange, as traders assess a slew of supply losses against the rising risk that runaway inflation and tightening monetary policy will hammer demand for industrial metals in some of the world’s top economies. The collapse of hedging due to extreme volatility and illiquidity has not helped with the soaring volatility.
Slovalco will earn about 1.6 billion krone, or $165 million selling its hedges for power, metals and raw materials over the second half of the year, it said.
Industries from fertilizer to aluminum are being crippled by soaring energy costs as Russia squeezes gas flows to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine, flows which will only slow further following last week’s report that Nord Stream 1 will be shut down from Aug 31 to (at least) Sept 2. Benchmark power prices soared to fresh all-time highs this week as the worst energy crisis in decades looks set to persist well into next year.
As Bloomberg notes, the metals industry’s massive power requirements leaves it in the firing line as power prices surge and politicians push ahead with measures to cut energy usage over winter. Each ton of aluminum takes about 14 megawatt-hours of power to produce, enough to run an average UK home for more than three years. Production of zinc — which requires about 4 megawatt-hours of power per ton — is also under acute strain, with prices rallying sharply Tuesday after one of the region’s biggest smelters said it would suspend output next month.
“Inevitably, the high European power prices are starting to see more aggressive closures of energy-intensive metal production facilities,” Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research, said in an emailed note. “Many zinc smelters in Europe have been running below full capacity all year, but this is the first full closure at a major facility.”
Traders are also monitoring power issues in China, where Sichuan province – a significant aluminum hub – is rationing electricity amid soaring temperatures. China boosted exports in recent months to help plug the gap overseas, and a reversal in that trend could underpin prices even as risks to demand grow.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/22/2022 – 06:55
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/anFWGB3 Tyler Durden
Von Greyerz: An Autumn Of Epic Asset Collapses & Higher Inflation… Means Poverty & Social Unrest
Authored by Egon Von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,
The world economy and especially the political and economic situation today consists of a potpourri of lethal ingredients which will have dire consequences…
Let’s look at what this deadly potion consists of:
Debts at levels that can never be repaid – sovereign, corporate & private
Epic global bubbles in stocks, bonds & property – all about to collapse
Major geopolitical conflicts with no desire for peace – major wars likely
Energy imbalances and shortages, most self-inflicted
Food shortages leading to major famine and civil unrest
Inflation, leading to hyperinflation & global poverty
Political and economic corruption in US, Europe and most countries
No country will afford social security, medical or pension payments
So what are governments around the world doing to solve these problems?
Nothing of course.
The only thing they know is to print more money. They have never understood that a debt problem cannot be solved with more debt. All they can try to achieve is to pass the baton to the next leader so it will be his problem.
This means that all the political, economic and financial mismanagement of the past 50 years will result in a global collapse never seen before in history.
The consequences will be both dire and unpredictable since the world has no experience of this magnitude and complexity of problems.
So what are global leaders doing?
What is clear is that Western leaders will not assume any responsibility for the coming calamities.
Covid will obviously be blamed although there is a lot of evidence that it was manmade and could have been controlled with simple and cheap existing medicines. And all the lockdowns and restrictions have certainly had a bigger impact than the disease itself. Sweden for example virtually had no lockdowns or mask requirements and did not suffer more deaths than countries in total lockdown.
Special interests like Big Pharma clearly had the politicians in their hands. They had trillions of dollars to gain and nothing to lose since they are immune against any prosecution.
Anyway, it has happened and we can’t go back. The future will tell us if, as many scientists believe, the people’s immune system will have been severely weakened by the vaccines.
Secondly, the Russians will be blamed for the current global economic problems of inflation, energy shortages and decline of global trade. The fact that these problems started well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine is quickly forgotten.
Since 3600BC, governments have fought 14,000 wars against each other. As far as I am aware, there is no period in history without an important war.
At the end of the 30-year war, European nations tried to put a stop to unprovoked wars with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. The peace conference in Muenster involved 194 states. The start of the war in 1618 was the Protestant Bohemians rising against the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. The major opponents to the Roman Catholics were the Habsburgs supported by Sweden and the Netherlands. Spain and France were also involved in the war together with many other nations.
Interestingly, my two home countries benefitted from the peace. Sweden by virtue of being a major military power at that time gained substantial territories around the Baltic and Switzerland gained formal independence from Austria.
But the major result of the Westphalian peace treaty in 1648 was:
National self-determination
Precedent for ending wars through diplomatic congresses
Peaceful coexistence among sovereign nations
Acceptance of the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other nations if there was not a clear present danger to the aggressor.
Almost all wars in history have been between neighbouring countries. But in the 20th century the US changed that.
Without provocation and far from its borders, the US invaded Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. So the 300 year old Westphalian principle of non-interference was properly buried by the US on multiple occasions. But not only did the US break this principle but also failed in each single one of the aforementioned conflicts.
One could of course argue that Japan broke the treaty first with the Pearl Harbour attack. But like all aggressors they claimed self defence against potential US interference in Japan’s ambitions in the Pacific.
The Russians will of course argue that they haven’t broken the Westphalian treaty since Ukraine historically has been part of Russia. In the Maidan revolution in 2014, a US inspired coup ousted the Soviet friendly Ukrainian leader and replaced him by a Western friendly leader. Since then Russia has always warned the West that it cannot accept being surrounded by an increasing number of NATO countries just like the Russian missiles on Cuba in 1962 directed against the US.
What we do know is that sadly wars are an integral part of history and as long as there are people on earth, there will be wars
The risk is that what now seems a local conflict in eastern Ukraine will become a major international conflict.
This is not a war between a small innocent country and a superpower. No this is a major conflict between the US and Russia. And since China has declared it is supporting Russia, this is a conflict between the three major super powers in the world.
And since the US has coerced the EU to join against Russia with weapons, money and sanctions, this is a conflict of major proportions.
The lack of statesmen and strong leadership in the US and EU has created an absurd situation with the EU not just biting the hand that feeds them but actually biting it off totally.
With many European countries being dependent on Russian gas, oil, cereal and fertilisers, EU’s left hand doesn’t know what the right one is doing. Not only is this a human and economic catastrophe of major proportions but one which will have major implications for Europe for a long time. Germany used to be the economic and financial engine of Europe but is now on the way to becoming a basket case. But sadly they haven’t discovered it yet.
Scholz inherited ludicrous Marxist policies from Merkel. For example to close down both nuclear energy and coal was always a recipe for disaster with no medium term viable alternatives. And her immigration policy will not only be economically ruinous for Germany but also lead to major social unrest.
The demographics of Germany is also another irreparable problem. With the lowest fertility rate in Europe combined with the highest life expectancy, Germany is entering a long term cycle of economic contraction.
Add to this that Germany has financed a major part of the Mediterranean EU countries’ woes through the Target2 transfer payment system.
As the Target2 graph shows below, the transfer payments to Italy of €596 billion, Spain €526b, to the ECB €358b, Greece €107b and Portugal €69b have been mainly financed by Germany to the extent of €1.2 trillion.
Add to that the balance sheet of the ECB which has grown more than 8X since 2004 to €8.7 trillion GRAPH and we can confidently state that the whole European Economic Community -ECB- has now become -EDC- or the Economic Debt Community.
It is clear that the old basket cases of Greece, Italy and Spain which were forced by Brussels to change leadership and to take on more debt are the immediate danger to the EU and the Eurozone.
If we just take Italy, their debt has doubled since 2000 to €2.7 trillion which at 150% of GDP means that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy.
But it is not only Italy’s debt that has surged, but even worse, the cost of financing it. Since September 2021, 10 year Italian bond yields have gone up 6X from 0.5% to 3.4%.
This is obviously more than Italy can afford!
The head of the Bundesbank Joachim Nagel has made it clear that it would be fatal for the ECB to hold borrowing costs down for ill-disciplined Eurozone states. He declared that such action would be “treacherous waters”. So Italy and Greece can no longer expect subsidised rates from the EU.
Italy needs to roll over €300 billion of debt annually plus finance its annual deficit of €100 billion, a real Sisyphean task. When Germany was the rich uncle of the EU, these debt levels were tolerated just to keep this dinosaur from falling apart. But with the coming severe German economic downturn combined with insoluble debt and structural problems in all EU countries, the inevitable collapse of the European dream is now reality as I have predicted for over 20 years.
Politicians always learn too late that political dreams and economic reality are as far apart as heaven and hell. If these politicians ever studied history, they would have learnt that all these illusions of grandeur always end not just in tears but in total collapse.
If I were in charge of Greece and Italy I would quickly default on the debt and create new Drachmas and Liras. That would give these countries a short term relative advantage rather than to sink in the general quagmire of the EU at a later stage. If they stay in the EU, Brussels will force Greece and Italy to take on more debt and impose unacceptable conditions. No country will ever repay their debt anyway or be in a position to finance it so better to run for the exit now rather than to wait for the EU’s total collapse.
So with Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain all having their problems, so does Macron in France. Having lost a working majority, he can no longer afford to be arrogant and will find it hard to reduce the French budget deficits, a condition to get German agreement for joint debt issuance.
So the EU and the Euro is now entering a final chapter. Like all political monstrosities, the fall will take a number of years. Brussels and government leaders in especially Germany and France will remain on the barricades for a long time although everything around them will fall apart. The only thing that could precipitate the fall is a debt default by the ECB when investors instead of buying the worthless debt paper will use it for fuel as they have run out of energy sources.
The only problem is of course that the debt is electronic and therefore unsuitable for burning- Hmmm.
Going across the pond, the US elite has never hated someone more than Trump. They tried all they could during his reign and now he is the first ex-president who is being raided by the FBI.
The US regime shot themselves in the foot with the sanctions against Russia. The Russians are still selling their energy to Germany, China, India etc and instead the suffering parties are the US, Europe and the rest of the world with high inflation and energy shortages.
With already high support for the Republicans and Trump, this raid is likely to have the opposite effect of the one desired by the regime. How many times can you shoot yourself in the foot before it really hurts?
This UN programme, supported by Schwab and the WEF (World Economic Forum) was always going to fail.
Starting in 2016, bureaucrats with no understanding of the real economy created this programme signed by 194 nations. There are 17 admirable but unrealistic goals like No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health, Clean Energy, Climate Action etc.
Today almost half way into the programme, every single goal is hopelessly behind schedule with no chance of achieving the target.
How could anyone believe that 194 nations could jointly achieve these 17 goals when not even one single country can do it?
More about Agenda 2030 and Schwab’s attempt to take over the UN in a later article.
As generally is the case before major turns in markets, optimism is still high. But this autumn is likely to change all that as the realities outlined at the beginning of this article finally hit the world.
Stock markets are now extremely near finishing the correction and to resume the downtrend in earnest. It is possible that the real falls in markets will wait until September but the risk is here now and very dangerous.
What we know with certainty is that the world is facing a wealth destruction and wealth transfer of major proportions.
Most paper assets will die a relatively quick death and that includes paper money.
This will obviously include stocks, bonds, property and all derivatives. Falls of 75-95% in the next few years will not be uncommon.
As currencies finish their journey to ZERO (they are already down 97-99% since 1971) no use betting on the horse that comes last to the bottom whether it is the Dollar or the Euro.
They will all get there!
Instead, the only money which has survived in history is gold and silver and these metals will continue to maintain their purchasing power or even enhance it as all fiat money is killed off by governments and central banks by the creation of an unlimited supply.
It is so simple really but still only 0.5% of financial assets are in physical gold in spite of the metal’s golden 5,000 year record. That percentage is about to change drastically.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/22/2022 – 06:30
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/R7DqKdE Tyler Durden
“A Perfect Storm”: Sharp Rise In Abandoned Pets As Cost-Of-Living Skyrockets In UK
There has been a “sharp rise” in abandoned pets in the UK as the cost-of-living has skyrocketed, according to the Hope Rescue Center in south-east Wales, which says it’s received 300 calls in the past 90 days from people who can’t afford to keep their animals.
According to the center, the abandoning of pets was caused by a “perfect storm” of increased dog ownership during the pandemic, combined with surging rents and other costs of living.
According to the BBC, UK households bought 3.2 million pets in the first year after the lockdown.
Rolo, a one-year-old terrier is one of the many dogs at the rescue centre.
He was brought by a dog warden as a stray, with very little known about his background.
The centre said although he was very friendly, he could get overwhelmed in some situations, so needs a gentle approach.
The centre’s owner and founder, Vanessa Wadden, said Rolo was one of many and the situation was the worst she has seen 17 years.
“In the last three months alone we’ve had over 300 calls from people asking for our help,” she said.
“It is very dramatic, it is a perfect storm.
“We are having to turn dogs away and that is the hardest bit, it is heartbreaking.” -BBC
According to the report, rescue centers across Wales are struggling to cope with the surge.
“There are circumstances where we can’t always help, we can’t always take the dog in there and then, but we would urge owners to always pick up the phone,” said Hope Rescue’s Katie Bull.
“We can always offer advice if you are struggling to feed the dog, or struggling with medical costs and we can also put people on the waiting list.”
At the Cardiff Dogs Home, the number of strays, surrendered and unwanted dogs has been rising on a daily basis – and they’ve seen record inquiries.
“The demand has been quite striking for lots of different reasons,” said manager Maria Bailey. “We are getting about 40 to 50 calls a month. Between April and July this year we have taken in 225 dogs, that is roughly 56 dogs a month at the moment so we are pretty much full all the time.“
Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/22/2022 – 05:45
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/Y9qZIQr Tyler Durden
Nikki Fried, the only Democrat among Florida’s statewide elected officials, might seem like an unlikely champion of the Second Amendment. But as Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer affairs, Fried oversees medical marijuana and concealed carry permits, both of which are affected by a federal law that prohibits cannabis consumers from owning guns. That ban, Fried argues in a federal lawsuit she filed in April, is illegal and unconstitutional.
“I’m suing the Biden Administration because people’s rights are being limited,” Fried announced on Twitter. “Medical marijuana is legal. Guns are legal. This is about people’s rights and their freedoms to responsibly have both.”
In addition to her Second Amendment claim, Fried argues that the ban on gun possession by marijuana users violates a congressional spending rider that bars the Justice Department from interfering with state medical marijuana programs. Florida, where voters approved medical use of cannabis in 2016, is one of 37 states with such programs. Fried is asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida for an injunction barring federal officials from enforcing the gun restrictions against “state medical marijuana patients.”
Under current law, cannabis consumers who receive or possess firearms are committing a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Falsely denying marijuana use on the form required to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer is another felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. The form includes a warning that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”
In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that blocking gun sales to people who have medical marijuana cards is consistent with the Second Amendment because “empirical data and legislative determinations support a strong link between drug use and violence.” That decision, Fried argues, suffered from “a thin and stale factual record” and ignored a 2013 study commissioned by the Office of National Drug Control Policy that found “marijuana use does not induce violent crime.” She says “the stated factual basis” for the 9th Circuit’s ruling and similar decisions, “at least as it relates to state-law-abiding medical marijuana patients, is obsolete and without scientific support.”
Fried will be running against Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, if she wins the Democratic nomination this August. But on this issue, they see eye to eye. The governor’s office said he agrees that “Floridians should not be deprived of a constitutional right for using a medication lawfully.”
The post Florida Democrat Challenges the Gun Ban for Marijuana Users appeared first on Reason.com.
from Latest https://ift.tt/PQGfWJH
via IFTTT