Month: September 2022

Six States File Lawsuit Challenging Biden Student Debt Cancellation Program


Silhouettes of students wearing caps. The students are made out of money.

Demonstrators hold signs in favor of canceling student debt

Earlier today, six GOP-controlled state governments filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Biden’s massive student loan forgiveness program. This development is notable because at least some of the states have a very strong argument for “standing,” the biggest procedural obstacle to getting legality of the program considered in court.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the administration’s plan will cost some $400 billion. Other estimates differ. But it’s clearly a massive expenditure of federal funds regardless. The Justice Department claims that the loan forgiveness plan is authorized by a provision of the 2003 HEROES Act. For reasons discussed in a previous post, the Biden plan goes far beyond what the statute authorizes, and is also at odds with the “major questions” doctrine and nondelegation constraints on executive power. The loan forgiveness plan is a major executive usurpation of Congress’ spending power, similar to Donald Trump’s attempt to divert military funds to build his border wall.

The substantive legal arguments made in the states’ lawsuit are similar to those I and other critics of the program have been making since it was announced, and also to those put forward in the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) lawsuit filed yesterday. But the biggest significance of the state case is that the plaintiffs have a particularly strong case for standing, one that is harder to counter than that advanced in the PLF case (filed on behalf of Frank Garrison, an attorney who would end up with a higher state tax liability as a result of the loan forgiveness policy).

As I explained in an earlier post, Supreme Court precedent requires plaintiffs in federal cases to prove “standing,” which includes demonstrating that they have suffered or are likely to suffer an “injury” because of the law or policy they are challenging. That injury cannot be based merely on the plaintiff’s status as a taxpayer who might have to bear a higher fiscal burden as a result of the challenged program’s expenditure of government funds.

At least two of the state plaintiffs (Missouri and Arkansas) meet this burden because they have state government agencies that act as servicers for federally funded student loans of the type that would be forgiven under the administration plan. In my previous post on standing and student loans, I explained how such organizations qualify for standing to challenge the Biden plan:

[Loan servicers] collect student loan payments on behalf of the government, and the size of the fees they get depends in part on how much money is owed, whether the loan is delinquent, and how long the borrower takes to repay it. If loan forgiveness reduces delinquency rates, enables some borrowers to repay faster, or otherwise affects the amount servicing firms get paid, they pretty obviously suffer an injury in fact, and would have standing to sue.

The idea that loan servicers have standing to challenge the Biden plan is widely accepted by lawyers and legal scholars. Indeed, I have yet to see any serious argument to the contrary. It is obvious that the administration’s plan to cancel loan debt owed by many millions of people will cost the Nebraska and Arkansas state student loan servicing agencies at least some money. And, under Supreme Court precedent, even a very small loss ($1 is enough!) qualifies as an injury sufficient for standing.

In a move likely intended to make it more difficult for opponents of the plan to find potential plaintiffs who can get standing, the Biden Administration has exempted loans held by private lenders—many of them contracted under the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP)—from its debt cancellation policy. Administration officials may have thought that private lenders are more likely to sue than loan servicers who have ongoing relationships with the Department of Education, and therefore may be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

The administration’s decision to exempt the FFELP loans (thereby excluding some 770,000 potential beneficiaries of the loan forgiveness program) strikes me as a sign of weakness. If they were confident of prevailing on the merits, they would not be so eager to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of program beneficiaries merely to reduce the odds of facing a lawsuit by a plaintiff with standing.

Regardless, this move is unlikely to stop the state lawsuit. In addition to servicing FFELP loans,  the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA) also (according to the states’ complaint) services conventional Direct Loan Program (DLP) student debt. These DLP loans are enough to give Missouri standing, even if the FFELP loans it services are exempt.

As I noted in an update to my post about the PLF lawsuit, the administration plans to block standing in that case by allowing Garrison and others like him to opt out of the loan forgiveness plan. Whether this strategy succeeds may depend on how the opt-out is structured, and how difficult it is to get one.

But even if the opt-out defeats standing in the PLF case, the administration doesn’t have a similar way to get around it in the state case. Exempting DLP loans from the the debt cancellation program would essentially gut the entire plan, as these are the vast majority of the loans potentially covered by it.

The Administration could potentially exempt only those DLP loans serviced by MOHELA or those held by state-controlled loan servicers generally. But such a move would only invite additional lawsuits by other loan servicers. If the latter see that filing a lawsuit is an easy path to getting exempted from the plan, that increases the potential benefit of suing, and reduces the risk. Loan servicers could even band together to file a class action lawsuit, thereby reducing the risk that the Department of Education will retaliate against them (it cannot easily refuse to deal with the entire industry).

The PLF lawsuit can also be attacked on standing grounds because the injury in that case is partly caused by the structure of state tax law (an issue on which the judge in that case has asked for additional briefing). That question does not arise in the case filed by the six states.

For these reasons, the filing of the state lawsuit significantly increases the likelihood that standing issues will not prevent courts from addressing the underlying legality of the Biden loan forgiveness plan. Standing problems may stymie some potential plaintiffs. But they probably won’t block all of them.

Critics may justifiably attack the GOP politicians behind the state lawsuit as hypocrites. Where were these people when Trump similarly tried to use emergency powers to raid the treasury for his border wall? The same charge also applies to the many Democratic politicians who condemned Trump’s border wall diversion, but cheer on Biden’s loan forgiveness plan. Just as there are “fair weather federalists,” there are also fair weather champions of separation of powers.

But the hypocrisy of many of the politicians involved doesn’t undermine the legal validity of their case. Many important cases have been won by litigants with highly impure motives. So it may prove here.

But, for those who care, I take this opportunity to reiterate that I forcefully opposed Trump’s border wall diversion, too (see, e.g., here, here, and here). Of course, consistency on such matters is easier to achieve if you’re not a politician and have no desire to become one!

As with the PLF lawsuit, a victory for the plaintiffs may not automatically result in an injunction barring the program as a whole. How broad the resulting injunction would be is an issue that is itself likely to be fought in court, should the states prevail on the merits. Potential options include a nationwide injunction stopping the entire plan, an injunction limited to borrowers residing in the plaintiff states, and perhaps other possibilities, as well.

NOTE: The Pacific Legal Foundation—the public interest firm litigating the Garrison case—is also my wife’s employer (though she herself is not working on the case). My interest in this issue—and other similar separation of powers matters—long predates PLF’s involvement. I do not have any connection to the lawsuit filed by the six states.

As a university professor, I actually stand to benefit from Biden’s plan, if courts uphold it, because loan forgiveness essentially subsidizes the consumption of the services universities and their faculty provide.

 

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How Do You Challenge A Student Loan Forgiveness Rule That Does Not Exist?

To date, I have not written about President Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative. Why? Because the rule doesn’t actually exist! There has been no notice in the Federal Register. Rather, we are left with a series of press releases, fact sheets, and the like. Government by blog post, as I’ve called it, is not new. The Obama Administration would often modify regulatory regimes, such as the Affordable Care Act, through FAQs and other subregulatory guidance documents. But as best as I can recall, the Obama Administration did not deliberately avoid publishing a new rule to frustrate legal challenges. Yet it seems that the Biden Administration is doing exactly that. Indeed, the Administration appears to be making changes to the policy on the fly for the express purpose of blocking law suits.

Consider the case brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation on September 27. What was the theory of standing? Frank Garrison (a lawyer for PLF) claimed he would face an increased tax burden if his debt was automatically cancelled. When the suit was filed, Garrison did not have to take any steps–the debt would be cancelled automatically. PLF obviously recognized that this policy could be changed. Steve Simpson of PLF told the New York Times:

If borrowers can opt out, Mr. Garrison’s claim “will be a harder case for us,” said Steve Simpson, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal, which is representing Mr. Garrison. “It would be harder to argue that he’s harmed any more.”

Lo and behold, the Biden Administration would make just that change. On September 28, the Department of Education filed a notice with the court:

In his motions for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, Plaintiff challenges a federal student loan cancellation policy announced by the U.S. Department of Education (“Department”), and claims that he will be harmed if the Department automatically cancels $20,000 of his federal student loan debt. Defendants submit this notice in advance of tomorrow’s scheduled conference to inform the Court that the Department updated its website today to confirm that any borrower who qualifies for automatic debt relief—i.e., relief without filing an application—will be given an opportunity to opt out. See U.S. Dep’t of Educ., Federal Student Aid, One-Time Student Debt Relief, https://ift.tt/LtJTix2 (last visited Sept. 28, 2022) (“If you would like to opt out of debt relief for any reason, including because you are concerned about a state tax liability, you will be given an opportunity to opt out.”). Upon receiving this lawsuit and reviewing Plaintiff’s filings, the Department has already taken steps to effectuate Plaintiff’s clearly stated desire to opt out of the program and not receive $20,000 in automatic cancellation of his federal student loan debt, and so notified Plaintiff’s counsel today.

Within 24 hours, the Department updated its website, and opted Garrison out of cancellation, thus mooting the suit. This filing almost sounds giddy. You can’t stop us! We’re the government! And, by the way, you’re stuck paying the $20,000 debt. Sorry, Frank. Emily Bremer flagged the change:

Because the Department has not yet published a notice of or rule governing the program (the final agency action everyone seems to be waiting for), the program remains malleable even as its implementation is already underway. Indeed, the Department’s guidance to borrowers changed just this week (compare this snapshot from Monday, September 26 to this snapshot from today). “Nearly 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically,” changed to “[n]early 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief without applying–unless they choose to opt out.”

Now you see it:

Now you don’t.

The word “automatically” was simply airbrushed away, like a photo of Stalin.

And on September 29, the district court denied relief because of the change:

Following a change in the student loan debt relief plan at issue (Filing No. 13), the court, in view of the fact the Department of Education exempted Plaintiff from receiving debt relief, finds Plaintiff cannot be irreparably harmed as is required for preliminary relief. Pursuant to the parties’ agreement, the motions for a temporary restraining order (Filing No. 4) and preliminary injunction (Filing No. 5) are DENIED without prejudice.

Notice that the court refers to a “student loan debt relief plan.” Not a rule or regulation or anything of the sort. A “plan,” whatever that is.

On September 29, we saw yet another attempt to block litigation. Missouri and several other states challenged the not-yet-released policy. Missouri’s Higher Education Authority asserted standing based on servicing Federal Family Education Loans (FFELP):

104. The Mass Debt Cancellation has created an enormous incentive to consolidate FFELP loans not held by ED (which are not currently eligible for cancellation) into DLP loans (which are eligible for cancellation). The inevitable result is that FFELP loan borrowers will likely consolidate into DLP loans en masse.

105. The consolidation of MOHELA’s FFELP loans harms the entity by depriving it of an asset (the FFELP loans themselves) that it currently owns.

106. The consolidation of MOHELA’s FFELP loans harms the entity by depriving it of the ongoing interest payments that those loans generate.

This argument may have been valid when the complaint was filed. But sometime on September 29, the Education Department excluded the FFEL loans from the loan forgiveness policy. Poof! NPR described the reversal as “remarkable.”

Today, according to federal data, more than 4 million borrowers still have commercially-held FFEL loans. Until Thursday, the department’s own website advised these borrowers that they could consolidate these loans into federal Direct Loans and thereby qualify for relief under Biden’s debt cancellation program.

On Thursday, though, the department iss. The guidance now says, “As of Sept. 29, 2022, borrowers with federal student loans not held by ED cannot obtain one-time debt relief by consolidating those loans into Direct Loans.”

Now you see it!

Now you don’t!

If only the Internet Archive was around to index the missing eighteen minutes from the Watergate Tapes!

The Department of Education excluded nearly 800,000 borrowers with FFEL loans. Why? It seems that the government is trying to block Missouri’s suit. To be sure, Missouri has several other theories of standing. (I was impressed with how thorough the injury section was.) But the government’s behavior here is clear as day: modify the policy on the fly to knock out any viable theories of standing, even if doing so excludes people from loan forgiveness.

Emily Bremer offers a more charitable take:

This change presumably was made in response to the lawsuit filed earlier this week challenging the program’s legality, to defeat the plaintiff’s standing (and prevent others from having such standing).

This raises a troubling possibility: that the Department of Education has not published a notice or rule establishing the loan forgiveness program (as § 1098bb requires) precisely because the absence of a final agency action makes a legal challenge more difficult. Maybe a notice or rule will be forthcoming–perhaps when the first borrowers receive the promised loan forgiveness. If so, millions of borrowers might be granted relief before a court could consider a challenge to the program’s lawsuits. And perhaps that, too, is the goal.

How do you challenge a rule that doesn’t exist, and that constantly changes with every new blog post? The Biden Administration keeps moving the goal posts to block legal challenges.

I have no doubt lawyers in DOJ planned each and every step here: they would wait till a suit was filed, then update the website with a “revision” to try to moot the litigation. (Congressional Republicans should exercise their oversight power here to investigate.) And, for all we know, the Department will finally publish the rule when it looks like things are getting risky in court–maybe hope for a remand without vacatur. (Recall the various iterations of the travel ban that were issued.) But by that point, millions of Americans will already benefit from the rule, and the Administration will have prevailed.

We should all think back to the census litigation. The Chief Justice, in particular, was incensed with how the Trump Administration played fast and loose with the rules, and modified explanations on the fly during the course of litigation. Here, we have an inchoate policy that is about to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, without an actual rule in print. And, the plan is being altered for the blatant purpose of blocking litigation. I suspect this gamesmanship will not be received well. If one or more circuits enjoin the policy, do not expect the Supreme Court to stay the injunction on the emergency docket.

The post How Do You Challenge A Student Loan Forgiveness Rule That Does Not Exist? appeared first on Reason.com.

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Brief Update on the Pacific Legal Foundation Case Against Biden’s Student Loan Cancellation Plan


Silhouettes of students wearing caps. The students are made out of money.

On Wednesday I wrote about the case challenging Biden’s student loan debt cancellation program filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) on behalf of attorney Frank Garrison, who is himself a PLF employee. For details about the case and its novel strategy for getting around the procedural constraint of “standing” see my earlier post.

Yesterday, federal district court Judge Richard Young issued an order denying the plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction blocking. But the order is “without prejudice,” which means Garrison and PLF can quickly refile the case. And, in fact, the judge’s order gives them until October 10 to file an amended complaint, in which he urges them to consider the following two issues:

1. Whether he (and any additional plaintiffs) have standing. Particularly, whether
their injury is caused by and fairly traceable to the debt relief program or to the
Indiana Tax Code. See Segovia v. United States, 880 F.3d 384, 388–89 (7th
Cir. 2018).

2. Whether the Department of Education has taken sufficient action for the case
to be ripe for adjudication. Plaintiff’s allegations speculate about the terms of
the program. But as evidenced by the Government’s recent addition of an opt-
out provision, the plan is still evolving.

The first question relates to “causation,” which is one of the requirements of standing. As I see it, the cause of Garrison’s injury is the combination of the Biden plan and the Indiana Tax Code’s refusal to exempt this type of loan forgiveness from taxation (even as it does exempt the type of loan forgiveness he would get in the absence of the plan). But the fact that the Biden plan causes the injury in conjunction with actions by others doesn’t necessarily defeat standing, so long as the injury would still be avoided in the absence of the administration’s actions. There are previous cases where an injury  like this was enough to qualify for standing. Most famously, in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that Massachusetts and other states had standing to challenge the EPA’s refusal to regulate to prevent global warming, despite the fact that the claimed injuries were not solely caused by the EPA’s refusal to act, but by the combination of that and continuing emissions by various polluters.

As the judge notes, the administration has said that it plans to create an opt-out from its loan forgiveness plan that Garrison and others like him can take advantage of. Whether that defeats standing may depend on how the opt-out works, and how costly it is to get one. If doing so has even a small cost, that in itself might qualify as an “injury” sufficient for standing, even if a small one (a very small injury can be enough).

I will leave the ripeness issue to others with greater relevant expertise on that subject. But I expect that problem will soon become irrelevant, because the administration plans to begin implementing the plan, in the near future (probably in October).

Meanwhile, the significance of this lawsuit has diminished over the last 24 hours, because of the filing of another suit challenging the loan forgiveness plan, by six state governments. This one has a more conventional and stronger basis for standing, that seems likely to succeed.

NOTE: The Pacific Legal Foundation—the public interest firm litigating the Garrison case—is also my wife’s employer (though she herself is not working on the case). My interest in this issue—and other similar separation of powers matters—long predates PLF’s involvement.

 

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Six States File Lawsuit Challenging Biden Student Debt Cancellation Program


Silhouettes of students wearing caps. The students are made out of money.

Demonstrators hold signs in favor of canceling student debt

Earlier today, six GOP-controlled state governments filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Biden’s massive student loan forgiveness program. This development is notable because at least some of the states have a very strong argument for “standing,” the biggest procedural obstacle to getting legality of the program considered in court.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the administration’s plan will cost some $400 billion. Other estimates differ. But it’s clearly a massive expenditure of federal funds regardless. The Justice Department claims that the loan forgiveness plan is authorized by a provision of the 2003 HEROES Act. For reasons discussed in a previous post, the Biden plan goes far beyond what the statute authorizes, and is also at odds with the “major questions” doctrine and nondelegation constraints on executive power. The loan forgiveness plan is a major executive usurpation of Congress’ spending power, similar to Donald Trump’s attempt to divert military funds to build his border wall.

The substantive legal arguments made in the states’ lawsuit are similar to those I and other critics of the program have been making since it was announced, and also to those put forward in the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) lawsuit filed yesterday. But the biggest significance of the state case is that the plaintiffs have a particularly strong case for standing, one that is harder to counter than that advanced in the PLF case (filed on behalf of Frank Garrison, an attorney who would end up with a higher state tax liability as a result of the loan forgiveness policy).

As I explained in an earlier post, Supreme Court precedent requires plaintiffs in federal cases to prove “standing,” which includes demonstrating that they have suffered or are likely to suffer an “injury” because of the law or policy they are challenging. That injury cannot be based merely on the plaintiff’s status as a taxpayer who might have to bear a higher fiscal burden as a result of the challenged program’s expenditure of government funds.

At least two of the state plaintiffs (Missouri and Arkansas) meet this burden because they have state government agencies that act as servicers for federally funded student loans of the type that would be forgiven under the administration plan. In my previous post on standing and student loans, I explained how such organizations qualify for standing to challenge the Biden plan:

[Loan servicers] collect student loan payments on behalf of the government, and the size of the fees they get depends in part on how much money is owed, whether the loan is delinquent, and how long the borrower takes to repay it. If loan forgiveness reduces delinquency rates, enables some borrowers to repay faster, or otherwise affects the amount servicing firms get paid, they pretty obviously suffer an injury in fact, and would have standing to sue.

It is obvious that the administration’s plan to cancel loan debt owed by many millions of people will cost the Nebraska and Arkansas state student loan servicing agencies at least some money. And, under Supreme Court precedent, even a very small loss ($1 is enough!) qualifies as an injury sufficient for standing.

In a move likely intended to make it more difficult for opponents of the plan to find potential plaintiffs who can get standing, the Biden Administration has exempted loans held by private lenders—many of them contracted under the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP)—from its debt cancellation policy. Administration officials may have thought that private lenders are more likely to sue than loan servicers who have ongoing relationships with the Department of Education, and therefore may be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

The administration’s decision to exempt the FFELP loans (thereby excluding some 770,000 potential beneficiaries of the loan forgiveness program) strikes me as a sign of weakness. If they were confident of prevailing on the merits, they would not be so eager to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of program beneficiaries merely to reduce the odds of facing a lawsuit by a plaintiff with standing.

Regardless, this move is unlikely to stop the state lawsuit. In addition to servicing FFELP loans,  the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA) also (according to the states’ complaint) services conventional Direct Loan Program (DLP) student debt. These DLP loans are enough to give Missouri standing, even if the FFELP loans it services are exempt.

As I noted in an update to my post about the PLF lawsuit, the administration plans to block standing in that case by allowing Garrison and others like him to opt out of the loan forgiveness plan. Whether this strategy succeeds may depend on how the opt out is structured, and how difficult it is to get one.

But even if the opt out defeats standing in the PLF case, the administration doesn’t have a similar way to get around it in the state case. Exempting DLP loans from the the debt cancellation program would essentially gut the entire plan, as these are the vast majority of the loans potentially covered by it.

The Administration could potentially exempt only those DLP loans serviced by MOHELA or those held by state-controlled loan servicers generally. But such a move would only invite additional lawsuits by other loan servicers. If the latter see that filing a lawsuit is an easy path to getting exempted from the plan, that increases the potential benefit of suing, and reduces the risk. Loan servicers could even band together to file a class action lawsuit, thereby reducing the risk that the Department of Education will retaliate against them (it cannot easily refuse to deal with the entire industry).

The PLF lawsuit can also be attacked on standing grounds because the injury in that case is partly caused by the structure of state tax law (an issue on which the judge in that case has asked for additional briefing). That question does not arise in the case filed by the six states.

For these reasons, the filing of the state lawsuit significantly increases the likelihood that standing issues will not prevent courts from addressing the underlying legality of the Biden loan forgiveness plan. Standing problems may stymie some potential plaintiffs. But they probably won’t block all of them.

Critics may justifiably attack the GOP politicians behind the state lawsuit as hypocrites. Where were these people when Trump similarly tried to use emergency powers to raid the treasury for his border wall? The same charge also applies to the many Democratic politicians who condemned Trump’s border wall diversion, but cheer on Biden’s loan forgiveness plan. Just as there are “fair weather federalists,” there are also fair weather champions of separation of powers.

But the hypocrisy of many of the politicians involved doesn’t undermine the legal validity of their case. Many important cases have been won by litigants with highly impure motives. So it may prove here.

But, for those who care, I take this opportunity to reiterate that I forcefully opposed Trump’s border wall diversion, too (see, e.g., here, here, and here). Of course, consistency on such matters is easier to achieve if you’re not a politician and have no desire to become one!

NOTE: The Pacific Legal Foundation—the public interest firm litigating the Garrison case—is also my wife’s employer (though she herself is not working on the case). My interest in this issue—and other similar separation of powers matters—long predates PLF’s involvement. I do not have any connection to the lawsuit filed by the six states.

As a university professor, I actually stand to benefit from Biden’s plan, if courts uphold it, because loan forgiveness essentially subsidizes the consumption of the services universities and their faculty provide.

 

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Boycotting Law Schools in Clerk Hiring As a Way to Influence Law School Culture

Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho recently announced that he will be taking on cancel culture through his law clerk hiring practices. Judge Ho believes that the most significant cancel culture problems in legal education today are at Yale Law School.  He has therefore decided that, in his capacity as a United States judge, he will no longer hire any Yale Law graduates as law clerks. And he is encouraging other judges to join him.

As I understand things from David Lat’s useful coverage, Judge Ho’s goal is to change the culture of law schools.  By imposing a boycott, and by getting as many other conservative judges as he can to join him, he might discourage conservative applicants from enrolling at Yale Law School.  That might pressure Yale Law School to change its culture.  And that in turn might cause a shift in the culture at other schools.

This a bad idea, and I hope other judges do not adopt it.  Given our blog’s traditional  readership among conservative judges and clerks, I thought I would take a minute here to say why.

First, some context.  I think it’s fine if federal judges want to express their personal opinions about law school cultures.  Judges can give public talks in their personal capacity, and they can write op-eds in their personal capacity.  They can write books, go on podcasts, upload TikTok videos, or whatever.  We all have opinions, and judges do, too.  If they want to express them, I don’t have a problem with that.

I also think it’s fine for judges to decide not to hire graduates from a particular law school because they don’t expect clerks from that school to work out well. Federal judges pretty much have their choice of clerks.  In choosing which applicants to hire, it’s natural for judges to favor some schools, and to disfavor others, because the judges think they’re likely to have better or worse experiences hiring clerks from there. That’s all fine, too.

What Judge Ho is doing seems different, though. He is trying to use his position as a government official, and the accompanying power to direct taxpayer dollars to employ staff, in a way that maximizes his personal agenda outside of his government work.

Some will agree with that agenda, and others won’t.  But whatever your views on that, I think this ‘boycott’ crosses an important line.  It’s the line between judges expressing their personal views in an effort to persuade (which is fine), and judges harnessing their power as government officials to create pressure on private institutions to further their personal agendas (which is not fine, in my view).

Judge Ho has anticipated at least part of this objection.  David Lat reports:

To those who’d say he should “stay in his lane” and stop telling law schools (and law school deans) how to go about their business, [Judge Ho would] argue that judges are already expressing preferences of all sorts—e.g., judges who promise oral argument if litigants let younger lawyers do the arguing, judges who take race and sex into account when appointing class-action or multi-district litigation counsel, etc.

That doesn’t seem like much of a justification to me. Two wrongs don’t make a right. That is, Judge Ho presumably disagrees with those other judges who have tried to use their official powers to advance their personal agendas as it relates to law firm staffing.  I disagree with the decisions of those judges, too, for the same reason I disagree with Judge Ho’s plan. But the fact that some judges are “already” doing something does not justify doing a lot more of it. Some judges wrongly crossing a line does not remove that line for everyone else.

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Federal Bureau Of Intimidation: The Government’s War On Political Freedom

Federal Bureau Of Intimidation: The Government’s War On Political Freedom

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“In so many of the little places of everyday life in which life is lived out, somehow democracy doesn’t exist. And one of the creeping hands of totalitarianism running through the democracy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation… Because why does the FBI do all this? To scare the hell out of people… They work for the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill the people who are trying to change things.”—Howard Zinn, historian

Discredit, disrupt, and destroy.

That is how the government plans to get rid of activists and dissidents who stand in its way.

This has always been the modus operandi of the FBI (more aptly referred to as the Federal Bureau of Intimidation): muzzle anti-government sentiment, harass activists, and terrorize Americans into compliance.

Indeed, the FBI has a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures.

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, the FBI’s targets were civil rights activists, those suspected of having Communist ties, and anti-war activists. In more recent decades, the FBI has expanded its reach to target so-called domestic extremists, environmental activists, and those who oppose the police state.

Back in 2019, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism, without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach.

That misguided pledge sheds a curious light on the FBI’s latest nationwide spree of SWAT team raids, surveillance, disinformation campaigns, fear-mongering, paranoia, and strong-arm tactics.

For instance, just before dawn on Jan. 25, 2019, the FBI sent 29 heavily armed agents in 17 vehicles to carry out a SWAT-style raid on the Florida home of Roger Stone, one of President Trump’s longtime supporters. Stone, charged with a political crime, was taken away in handcuffs.

In March 2021, under the pretext of carrying out an inventory of U.S. Private Vaults, FBI agents raided 1400 safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills, seizing “more than $86 million in cash as well as gold, jewelry, and other valuables from property owners who were suspected of no crimes.”

In April 2021, FBI agents raided Rudy Giuliani’s home and office, seizing 18 electronic devices. More than a year later, Giuliani has yet to be charged with any crimes.

In June 2022, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official under the Trump Administration, was led out of his home in pajamas while federal law enforcement officials raided his home.

In the summer of 2022, FBI agents wearing tactical gear including body armor, helmets and camouflage uniforms and carrying rifles raided multiple homes throughout Little Rock, Ark., including a judge’s home.

In August 2022, more than a dozen FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago, the winter home of Donald Trump.

And in September 2022, 25 to 30 armed FBI agents raided the home of an anti-abortion activist, pointing guns at the family and terrorizing the man’s wife and seven children.

Politics aside, the message is clear: this is how the government will deal with anyone who challenges its authority.

You’re next.

Unfortunately, while these overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear, none of this is new.

The government has been playing these mind games for a long time.

As Betty Medsger, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, noted in 1971, the FBI was engaged in practices that had never been reported, probably were unconstitutional, and were counter to the public’s understanding of the agency’s purpose.

The objective: target anti-government dissenters for wide-scale harassment, widespread surveillance and intimidation in order to enhance their paranoia and make them think there was an “FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

Medsger, the recipient of stolen government files that provided a glimpse into the workings of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency, would later learn that between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted an intensive domestic intelligence program, termed COINTELPRO, intended to neutralize domestic political dissidents.

The explicit objective, according to one FBI memo: “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” perceived threats to the government’s power.

As Congressman Steve Cohen explains, “COINTELPRO was set up to surveil and disrupt groups and movements that the FBI found threatening… many groups, including anti-war, student, and environmental activists, and the New Left were harassed, infiltrated, falsely accused of criminal activity      .”

Sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Those targeted by the FBI under COINTELPRO for its intimidation, surveillance and smear campaigns included: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, the Black Panther Party, Billie Holiday, Emma Goldman, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Felix Frankfurter, John Lennon, and hundreds more.

Among those most closely watched by the FBI was King, a man labeled by the FBI as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” All told, the FBI collected 17,000 pages of materials on King.

With wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office, King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of “neutralizing” him. He even received blackmail letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968.

John Lennon, a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist, was another high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.

Lennon was singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally collected on his activities and associations.

For a while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Years after Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of files on him, including song lyrics.

J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, directed the agency to spy on the musician. There were also various written orders calling on government agents to frame Lennon for a drug bust. “The FBI’s files on Lennon … read like the writings of a paranoid goody-two-shoes,” observed reporter Jonathan Curiel.

As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”

Indeed, all of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics.”

The Church Committee, the Senate task force charged with investigating COINTELPRO abuses in 1975, echoed these concerns about the government’s abuses:

“Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.”

The report continued:

“Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed—including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.”

Fifty years later, we’re still having this same debate about the perils of government overreach.

For too long now, the American people have allowed their personal prejudices and politics to cloud their judgment and render them incapable of seeing that the treatment being doled out by the government’s lethal enforcers has remained consistent, no matter the threat.

The lesson to be learned is this: whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now, rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government and its henchmen today will eventually be meted out on the general populace.

At that point, when you find yourself in the government’s crosshairs, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white; it will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen; it will not matter whether you’re rich or poor; it will not matter whether you’re Republican or Democrat; and it certainly won’t matter who you voted for in the last presidential election.

At that point—when you find yourself subjected to dehumanizing, demoralizing, thuggish behavior by government bureaucrats who are hyped up on the power of their badges and empowered to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fit—remember you were warned.

Frankly, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are long past the point where we should be merely alarmed.

These are no longer experiments on our freedoms.

These are acts of aggression by a government that is no friend to freedom.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/29/2022 – 23:40

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Fauci Net Worth Soared 66% During Pandemic

Fauci Net Worth Soared 66% During Pandemic

The net worth of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s household soared a whopping 66% over the course of the pandemic, according to new financial disclosures obtained by OpenTheBooks.com. Fauci reported a Jan 1, 2019 net worth of $7,523,634. By Jan 1, 2022, it had grown to $12,677,513.  

Values are as of Jan 1 each year. Chart via OpenTheBooks.com

As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci was paid a 2021 salary of $456,028, making him the highest-paid employee in the entire federal government. His wife, Christine Grady, is chief bio-ethicist for the National Institutes of Health, does very well too, raking in a $238,970 salary last year.

Fauci is famously paid more than the president, and his wife collects more than the vice president. However, those hefty federal salaries aren’t the only driver of the Fauci household’s pandemic-era enrichment.

In 2021, Fauci was awarded the Tel Aviv University-affiliated Dan David Prize, which came with a $1 million check. The prize committee said Fauci “has been widely praised for his courage in speaking truth to power” during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The committee was apparently oblivious that Fauci was the power and routinely spoke falsehoods about everything from the usefulness of masking to herd immunity, the efficacy of vaccines, and NIH funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute. 

As is customary, Fauci donated some of his prize money back to be awarded as student scholarships, but still pocketed $901,400, according to the financial statements reviewed by OpenTheBooks.com. 

Though it’s chump change compared to the Dan David Prize, Fauci also scored $12,500 from both the Elliot Richardson Prize in Public Service and the Abelson Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and got $5,198 when he was named Federal Employee of the Year at the 2020 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals ceremony.  

Fauci even did some moonlighting as an editor for McGraw Hill, taking home $100,000 for his work in 2021. 

There’s no indication Fauci made any “shrewd” investments a la Nancy and Paul Pelosi. According to the financial disclosures, Fauci’s portfolio comprises broad mutual funds with no individual stocks: 

“These funds were held in a mix of trust, retirement, and college education accounts. Fauci has an IRA worth $706,219 (up $67,700); a defined benefit brokerage account totaling $2,551,210 (up $147,688); and a revocable trust worth $7,014,197 (up $1,718,299). His wife’s revocable trust is worth $2,269,225 (up $306,406) and an IRA totaling $136,662 (up $16,385),” reports OpenTheBooks.com. 

OpenTheBooks.com has filed four federal lawsuits against NIH to pry loose additional details not only about Fauci but also about royalties received by other NIH employees.  

Though Fauci has announced he’ll retire by the end of the year, the wheelbarrows full of taxpayer money will keep on rolling his way. When you’re the highest-paid employee in federal government history and you’ve been on the federal payroll for more than 55 years, that’ll make for an astounding pension of some $375,000 a year. 

It’s emblematic of the whole miserable Covid-19 spectacle: Bureaucrats wallow in government money while ordinary people suffer the ever-mushrooming destruction caused by public health’s catastrophic lockdown and mandate regime.  

Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/29/2022 – 23:20

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Orange Juice Prices Could “Increase Substantially” As Hurricane Pummels Florida’s Top Citrus Grow Region

Orange Juice Prices Could “Increase Substantially” As Hurricane Pummels Florida’s Top Citrus Grow Region

Hurricane Tropical Storm Ian could soon drive up orange juice prices at the supermarket as the powerful storm tears through the central-southwest part of the state where large citrus groves reside.

Donald Keeney, a meteorologist at Maxar Technologies Inc., told Bloomberg that 90% of the state’s citrus crop is in Ian’s path, including three top-producing counties. 

“There’s not a thing in the world you can do to protect crops. 

“All the areas are going to have impact. It could be the the final straw for some Florida growers,” said Raymond Royce, executive director at Highlands County Citrus Growers Association in Sebring, Florida. 

November orange juice futures contracts are trading as high as $1.90 per pound Thursday morning and have risen 7% since Monday. $2 per pound appears to be a multi-decade resistance level. 

On Monday, we pointed out OJ prices were set to rise due to the tropical threat with storm path projections for Tampa. But landfall was about two hours south near Fort Myers, suggesting more widespread damage to citrus crops. 

“The only problem is that as much as the crop could be blown off the trees, the high prices and tighter supply will also shrink demand,” said Judy Ganes of J Ganes Consulting. 

To get an idea of where the storm made landfall and top producing citrus counties in the state, the US Department of Agriculture’s map is an eye opener of the severe damage that could’ve hit citrus groves (there are still no official crop damage reports but assessments should be underway). 

The University of Florida estimated that 375,000 acres of citrus could be impacted.

Combine the storm’s potentially devastating blow to an industry already suffering from citrus greening, and Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio laid out to CNN about the disaster ahead:

“The citrus industry in Florida is already teetering on the brink because of citrus greening.

“They lose this year’s crop and a bunch of trees, you can’t just restart that.” 

 Readers may recall, earlier this year, we said Florida’s Citrus Crop To Be Smallest Since WW2, Squeezes OJ Prices Higher, noting that dwindling supply was pushing up orange juice prices at the supermarket. 

With that being said, crop damage reports could likely surface in the coming days or weeks and may push prices higher on increased supply woes. The $2 per pound mark will be in focus. 

Did we mention Florida is one of the top-producing citrus states? 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/29/2022 – 22:40

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Boycotting Law Schools in Clerk Hiring As a Way to Influence Law School Culture

Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho recently announced that he will be taking on cancel culture through his law clerk hiring practices. Judge Ho believes that the most significant cancel culture problems in legal education today are at Yale Law School.  He has therefore decided that, in his capacity as a United States judge, he will no longer hire any Yale Law graduates as law clerks. And he is encouraging other judges to join him.

As I understand things from David Lat’s useful coverage, Judge Ho’s goal is to change the culture of law schools.  By imposing a boycott, and by getting as many other conservative judges as he can to join him, he might discourage conservative applicants from enrolling at Yale Law School.  That might pressure Yale Law School to change its culture.  And that in turn might cause a shift in the culture at other schools.

This a bad idea, and I hope other judges do not adopt it.  Given our blog’s traditional  readership among conservative judges and clerks, I thought I would take a minute here to say why.

First, some context.  I think it’s fine if federal judges want to express their personal opinions about law school cultures.  Judges can give public talks in their personal capacity, and they can write op-eds in their personal capacity.  They can write books, go on podcasts, upload TikTok videos, or whatever.  We all have opinions, and judges do, too.  If they want to express them, I don’t have a problem with that.

I also think it’s fine for judges to decide not to hire graduates from a particular law school because they don’t expect clerks from that school to work out well. Federal judges pretty much have their choice of clerks.  In choosing which applicants to hire, it’s natural for judges to favor some schools, and to disfavor others, because the judges think they’re likely to have better or worse experiences hiring clerks from there. That’s all fine, too.

What Judge Ho is doing seems different, though. He is trying to use his position as a government official, and the accompanying power to direct taxpayer dollars to employ staff, in a way that maximizes his personal agenda outside of his government work.

Some will agree with that agenda, and others won’t.  But whatever your views on that, I think this ‘boycott’ crosses an important line.  It’s the line between judges expressing their personal views in an effort to persuade (which is fine), and judges harnessing their power as government officials to create pressure on private institutions to further their personal agendas (which is not fine, in my view).

Judge Ho has anticipated at least part of this objection.  David Lat reports:

To those who’d say he should “stay in his lane” and stop telling law schools (and law school deans) how to go about their business, [Judge Ho would] argue that judges are already expressing preferences of all sorts—e.g., judges who promise oral argument if litigants let younger lawyers do the arguing, judges who take race and sex into account when appointing class-action or multi-district litigation counsel, etc.

That doesn’t seem like much of a justification to me. Two wrongs don’t make a right. That is, Judge Ho presumably disagrees with those other judges who have tried to use their official powers to advance their personal agendas as it relates to law firm staffing.  I disagree with the decisions of those judges, too, for the same reason I disagree with Judge Ho’s plan. But the fact that some judges are “already” doing something does not justify doing a lot more of it. Some judges wrongly crossing a line does not remove that line for everyone else.

The post Boycotting Law Schools in Clerk Hiring As a Way to Influence Law School Culture appeared first on Reason.com.

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Escobar: Nord Stream Sabotage Propels ‘Disaster Capitalism’ To New, Toxic Level

Escobar: Nord Stream Sabotage Propels ‘Disaster Capitalism’ To New, Toxic Level

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The sabotage of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipelines in the Baltic Sea has ominously propelled ‘Disaster Capitalism’ to a whole new, toxic level.

This episode of Hybrid Industrial/Commercial War, in the form of a terror attack against energy infrastructure in international waters signals the absolute collapse of international law, drowned by a “our way or the highway”, “rules-based”, order.

The attack on both pipelines consisted of multiple explosive charges detonated in separate branches close to the Danish island of Bornholm, but in international waters.

That was a sophisticated operation, carried out in stealth in the shallow depth of the Danish straits. That would in principle rule out submarines (ships entering the Baltic are limited to a draught of 15 meters). As for prospective “invisible” vessels, these could only loiter around with permission from Copenhagen – as the waters around Borholm are crammed with sensors, reflecting fear of incursion by Russian submarines.

Swedish seismologists registered two underwater explosions on Monday – one of them estimated at 100 kg of TNT. Yet as much as 700 kg may have been used to blow up three separate pipeline nodes. Such amount could not have possibly been delivered in just one trip by underwater drones currently available in neighboring nations.

The pressure on the pipelines dropped exponentially. The pipes are now filled with seawater.

The pipes on both NS and NS2 can be repaired, of course, but hardly before the arrival of General Winter. The question is whether Gazprom – already focused on several hefty Eurasian customers –  would bother, especially considering that Gazprom vessels could be exposed to a possible NATO naval attack in the Baltic.

German officials are already spinning that NS and NS2 can “potentially” be out of commission “forever”. The EU economy and EU citizens badly needed that gas supply. Yet the EUrocracy in Brussels – which rules over nation-states – would not follow, because they have been dictated themselves by the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder. A case can be made that this Euro-oligarchy should one day be tried for treason.

As it stands, a strategic irreversibility is already self-evident; the population of several EU nations will pay a tremendous price and suffer serious consequences derived from this attack, short, medium and long term.

Cui bono? 

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson admitted that was “a matter of sabotage”. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen admitted “it was not an accident”. Berlin agrees with the Scandinavians.

Now compare it with former Polish Defense Minister (2005-2007) Radek Sikorski, a Russophobe married to rabid US “analyst” Anne Applebaum, who merrily tweeted “Thank you, USA”.

It gets curiouser and curiouser when we know that simultaneously to the sabotage the Baltic Pipe from Norway to Poland was partially opened, a “new gas supply corridor” servicing “the Danish and Polish markets”: actually a minor affair, considering months ago their sponsors were in trouble finding gas, and now it will be even harder, with much higher costs.

NS2 had already been attacked – in the open – all along its construction. Back in February, Polish ships actively tried to prevent the Fortuna pipe-laying vessel from finishing NS2. The pipes were being laid south of – you guessed it – Bornholm.

NATO for its part has been very active on the underwater drones department. The Americans have access to long distance Norwegian underwater drones which can be modified with other designs. Alternatively, professional navy clearance divers could have been employed in the sabotage – even as tidal currents around Bornholm are a serious matter.

The Big Picture reveals the collective West in absolute panic, with Atlanticist “elites” willing to resort to anything – outrageous lies, assassinations, terrorism, sabotage, all out financial war, support to neo-Nazis – to prevent their descent into a geopolitical and geoeconomic abyss.

Disabling NS and NS2 represents the definitive closure of any possibility of a German-Russia deal on gas supplies, with the added benefit of relegating Germany to the lowly status of absolute US vassal.

So that brings us to the key question of which Western intel apparatus designed the sabotage. Prime candidates are of course CIA and MI6 – with Poland set up as the fall guy and Denmark playing a very dodgy part: it’s impossible that Copenhagen was not at least “briefed” on the intel.

Prescient as ever, as early as in April 2021 Russians were asking questions about the military security of Nord Stream.

The crucial vector is that we may be facing the case of a EU/NATO member involved in an act of sabotage against the number one EU/NATO economy. That’s a casus belli. Outside of the appalling mediocrity and cowardice of the current administration in Berlin, it’s clear that the BND – German intel – as well as the German Navy and informed industrialists sooner or later will do the math.

This was far from an isolated attack. On September 22 there was an attempt against Turkish Stream by Kiev saboteurs. The day before, naval drones with English language IDs were found in Crimea, suspected of being part of the plot. Add to it US helicopters overflying the future sabotage nodes weeks ago; a UK “research” vessel loitering in Danish waters since mid-September; and NATO tweeting about the testing of “new unmanned systems at sea” on the same day of the sabotage.

Show me the (gas) money

The Danish Minister of Defense met urgently with NATO’s Secretary General this Wednesday. After all the explosions happened very close to Denmark’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). That may be qualified as crude kabuki at best; exactly on the same day, the European Commission (EC), NATO’s de facto political office, advanced its trademark obsession: more sanctions against Russia, including the certified-to-fail cap on oil prices.

Meanwhile, EU energy giants are bound to lose big time with the sabotage.

The roll call includes the German Wintershall Dea AG and PEG/ E.ON; the Dutch N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie; and the French ENGIE. Then there are those which financed NS2: Wintershall Dea again as well as Uniper; Austrian OMV; ENGIE again; and British-Dutch Shell. Wintershall Dea and ENGIE are both co-owners and creditors. Their fuming shareholders will want serious answers from a serious investigation.

It gets worse: there are no holds barred anymore on the Pipeline Terror front. Russia will be on red alert not only for Turk Stream but also Power of Siberia. Same for the Chinese and their maze of pipelines arriving in Xinjiang.

Whatever the methodology and the actors who were in the loop, this is payback – in advance – for the inevitable collective West defeat in Ukraine. And a crude warning to the Global South that they will do it again. Yet action always breeds reaction: from now on, “funny things” could also happen to US/UK pipelines in international waters.

The EU oligarchy is reaching an advanced process of disintegration at lightning speed. Their window of opportunity to at least attempt a role as a strategically autonomous geopolitical actor is now closed.

These EUROcrats now face a serious predicament. Once it’s clear who are the perpetrators of the sabotage in the Baltic, and once they understand all the life-changing socio-economic consequences for pan-EU citizens, the kabuki will have to stop. Including the already running, uber-ridiculous subplot that Russia blew up its own pipeline when Gazprom could simply have turned off the valves for good.

And once again, it gets worse: Gazprom is threatening to sue the Ukrainian energy company Naftofgaz for unpaid bills. That would lead to the end of Russian gas transiting Ukraine towards the EU.

As if all of that was not serious enough, Germany is contractually obligated to purchase at least 40 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year until 2030.

Just say no? They can’t: Gazprom is legally entitled to get paid even without shipping gas. That’s the spirit of a long-term contract. And it’s already happening: because of sanctions, Berlin does not get all the gas it needs but still needs to pay.

All the devils are here

Now it’s painfully clear the imperial velvet gloves are off when it comes to the vassals. EU independence: verboten. Cooperation with China: verboten. Independent trade connectivity with Asia: verboten. The only place for the EU is to be economically subjugated to the US: a tawdry remix of 1945-1955. With a perverse neoliberal twist: we will own your industrial capacity, and you will have nothing.

The sabotage of NS and NS2 is inbuilt in the imperial wet dream of breaking up the Eurasian land mass into a thousand pieces to prevent a trans-Eurasia consolidation between Germany (representing the EU), Russia and China: $50 trillion in GDP, based on purchasing power parity (PPP) compared to the US’s $20 trillion.

We must go back to Mackinder: control of the Eurasian land mass constitutes control of the world. American elites and their Trojan Horses across Europe will do whatever it takes not to give up their control.

“American elites” in this context encompass the deranged, Straussian neo-con-infested “intel community” and the Big Energy, Big Pharma and Big Finance that pays them and who profits not only from the Deep State’s Forever War approach but also wants to make a killing out of the Davos-concocted Great Reset.

The Raging Twenties started with a murder – of Gen Soleimani. Blowing up pipelines is part of the sequel. There will be a highway to hell all the way to 2030. Yet to borrow from Shakespeare, hell is definitely empty, and all the (Atlanticist) devils are here.

*  *  *

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst and author. His latest book is Raging Twenties. He’s been politically canceled from Facebook and Twitter. Follow him on Telegram.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/29/2022 – 22:20

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