Month: July 2023

June 30 marks Asteroid Day, a day dedicated by the United Nations to raising awareness around the risks of asteroid impacts.

The following chart, via Staista’s Anna Fleck, uses estimates from the Asteroid Foundation’s Asteroid Day portal to provide a round up of eight of the largest known asteroid impact craters on Earth.

You will find more infographics at Statista

First on the list – and the largest – is the Vredefort Crater, located not far from Johannesburg in South Africa. The crater was formed an estimated two billion years ago and today has an estimated diameter of some 300km.

Next up, is the Chicxulub Crater, located in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The Chicxulub impactor, as the asteroid that created it was known, is presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. The asteroid itself is thought to have been approximately 10 km in diameter and today its impact crater is approximately 180 km across.

The Popigai Crater in northern Siberia, Russia was created some 35 million years ago and today has a diameter of approximately 100 km. According to Asteroid Day, the area is now rich in diamond reserves thanks to the region having been heavy in carbon, which turned into the precious stone under the heat and pressure of the impact.

Three major impact craters in North America also make it onto the list: two in Canada (the Sudbury Basin in Ontario and the Manicouagan Crater in Québec) as well as one in the United States (Chesapeake Bay in Virginia). The latter is considered one of the best-preserved “wet-target” or marine impact craters worldwide.

To get a sense of scale, according to the Asteroid Day platform, many of these asteroid impact craters are so immense that they are only noticeable when using satellite imagery.

Different sources rank global craters with other metrics, for instance depending on the size of the impact crater when it was created rather than today, when it might have changed size due to erosion.

Authored by Mary Hong via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

China released its May national housing price data on June 15. Beijing and Shanghai had the largest fall in second-hand home prices among 70 large and medium-sized cities.

The price of second-hand homes in Shanghai fell by 0.8 percent compared with the previous month, the largest drop among cities surveyed, and Beijing fell by 0.6 percent.

Experts believe the fall in prices in the two megacities is a sign of a bad economy.

U.S.-based economist Davy J. Wong explained that the majority of Chinese investors have been limited to real estate because of limited investment channels under the current ruling regime.

He said that Chinese people in general believed real estate provides a better cushion against inflation and depreciation.

In China, local governments and developers who set the new housing market price have the real estate market fairly monopolized; “but the second-hand market is fairly free for maneuver, and thus reflects the true market in China,” he said.

In a 2019 report of the People’s Bank, 74.2 percent of tangible assets of urban households were housing, in a nationwide survey of 30,000 urban households; whereas real estate accounted for only around 30 percent of total household wealth in the United States, said the Chinese media report.

The weak economy has forced everyone to cut down their consumption, Wong analyzed. The three-year zero-COVID policy has ruined people’s confidence in the future. He believed many more people choose to sell their properties to ease financial stress, “It’s a risk management,” he said.

Wong said the falling second-hand housing prices in Beijing and Shanghai suggested the supply is too large for the transaction volume to keep up.

Read more here…

Just when you though the exodus from California to places like Florida and Texas may have slowed….you can guess again.

That’s because a recent poll called the California Community Poll, administered at the beginning of June, showed that roughly 43% of residents in California think the state is heading in the wrong direction. 

28% have mixed feelings about the direction and 28% think it is going in the right direction, a summary from Just the News/The Center Square reported this week. The survey interviewed 1,354 people. 

56% of respondents were “totally dissatisfied” with the state’s cost of healthcare and another 56% said they were dissatisfied with the cost of homes in the state. More than 50% of residents also were dissatisfied with safety in their local communities, the report says.

Californians also seem to be unhappy with the state’s economy, with 68% of those polled saying they were “totally dissatisfied” and a stunning 81% of respondents saying that the cost of everyday expenses was unsatisfactory. 

61% of those polled also said the cost of living is the key reason that they are considering leaving the state, with about 40% of respondents saying they are considering moving to another state, even with 68% of respondents saying California is “part of how they identify themselves”. 

Also focused on the economy, 46% of residents surveyed said they can’t pay for an unexpected expense and don’t have the ability to save. 

The report was quick to note that, despite the stunning response from the more than 1,300 people surveyed, many residents were “by and large” still happy to live in the state because it “brings people together around new ideas and vibrant communities.”

So, we’ll see you in Texas and Florida then, right?

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

New York City is now providing more shelter to non-citizens than to its own homeless resident population, according to the latest assessment from a city official.

At a Wednesday press conference, New York City Deputy Mayor For Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said the city is currently sheltering more than 100,000 people, the majority of whom are illegal immigrants and other non-citizens who are seeking to stay in the United States for the long-term.

“With over 50,000 asylum seekers currently in our care at this point, we now have more people seeking U.S. asylum than longtime unhoused New Yorkers in our shelter system,” New York City Williams-Isom said.

Many of the non-citizens being sheltered in the city are people who illegally crossed the U.S. southern border but made asylum claims or otherwise requested legal status in the U.S. and are now awaiting a ruling in their immigration cases.

Since last year, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been busing illegal immigrants away from his border state to other areas of the country; particularly Democratic districts like New York City that have designated themselves as immigration “sanctuary cities.” New York City has been one of the main receiving points for tens of thousands of these illegal immigrants and many have stayed in the city since their arrival.

Williams-Isom called the ratio of illegal immigrants to resident homeless people in the city’s shelter system “sobering.” She said New York City has taken in 81,200 illegal immigrants and asylum seekers since the Spring of 2022, including “2,500 new asylum seekers” in the past week.

“You see from today’s numbers that we have reached a tipping point,” she said. “We now have more asylum seekers in our care than longtime New Yorkers from when we first came in and who are in our existing [New York City Department of Homeless Services] system.

NYC Mayor’s Shelter Strategy

Williams-Isom said New York City has opened 176 new shelter sites, including 12 humanitarian relief sites since last spring, but indicated the city has virtually exhausted its capacity to shelter people.

“We will continue to do our part. I might say we’re doing more than our part,” she said on Thursday. “But this is a national humanitarian crisis and we need sustained and profound support from the federal government in the form of financial aid and in the form of a national coordination.”

Following a 1984 court decision known as the “Callahan consent decree,” New York City has had to provide shelter for virtually all homeless people who apply. Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams requested that a court suspend this “Right to Shelter” rule. New York City is also one of many locations throughout the U.S. that consider themselves “sanctuary cities,” meaning they do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities that might arrest or deport illegal immigrants.

Abbott has said his busing strategy has shone a spotlight on the hypocrisy of sanctuary cities that balk at the prospect of having to actually take, and share responsibility for, illegal immigrants.

In May, Adams began trying to relocate some illegal immigrants from New York City to neighboring areas of New York, with a commitment to cover the costs of their shelter, food, counseling, and other services for up to four months. Many of these neighboring communities have rejected the relocation efforts, even issuing emergency declarations to block Adams’ administration from busing illegal immigrants to their communities.

Earlier this month, the Adams administration filed a lawsuit against 30 New York counties, seeking a court order overriding any emergency orders blocking his efforts to move illegal immigrants to those neighboring communities.

Adams has also called on President Joe Biden’s administration to provide New York City with more federal funding for its shelter system. In a May 21 interview with CBS News, host Margaret Brennan noted the federal government has pledged about $30 million in assistance to deal with the influx, but Adams insisted his city’s shelter expenses would far exceed that level of federal support.

“We’re projected to spend close to $4.3 billion, if not more. This estimate was based on a number of migrants coming to the city, and those numbers have clearly increased,” Adams said. “When you look at the price tag, $30 million comes nowhere near what this city is paying for a national problem.”

Submiited by Liam Cosgrove,

Whether or not what transpired over the weekend was a legitimate coup attempt or strategic theater by Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, it was understood by the western press and US government to be an attempted coup. This article will operate under that assumption to scrutinize the first-order thinking displayed by many hawkish pundits and Biden officials.

There were reports that Prigozhin occupied — in under 24 hours — Rostov-on-Don on Saturday. This city is the headquarters for Russia’s Southern Military District. Just 60 miles from the border of this district is the Engels-2 airbase, home to several long-range nuclear bombers. Considering the proximity between these nukes and Russia’s most notorious mercenary, this should have been a wake-up call to the Biden administration.

Still, at Monday’s State Department briefing, the administration seemed unphased if not a little pleased by the coup:

A supposed “coup” in the world’s largest nuclear power resolved peacefully.

While State Dept seemed to welcome Prigozhin’s revolt, it refused to engage questions from The Grayzone’s @cosgrove_iv on the dangers of Russia’s nuclear arsenal falling into the Wagner leader’s hands. pic.twitter.com/6t3RreCrAe

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) June 27, 2023

The reaction came just one week after President Biden warned a group of California donors that the threat of Putin using a nuclear bomb is “real.” Prigozhin’s main gripes with Russia’s top military brass is that they haven’t been aggressive enough in their fight, saying earlier this year that his mercenary group would not be taking any more prisoners of war and would instead “kill everyone on the battlefield.”

This man could have commandeered part of the Russian nuclear arsenal over the weekend… and that’s a good thing?

While State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller withheld his excitement, other “experts” were not so coy. Stanford professor and former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul celebrated the chaos over the weekend, saying it proved that the West should get even more aggressively involved in the war:

Instead of doubling down with more force to crush the mutiny, Putin accepted humiliation instead. He was the rat trapped in the corner that so many Putinologists have told us to fear. But he didn’t lash out & go crazy. He negotiated & with a traitor. 4/

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) June 25, 2023

This really sums up the neocon mindset. After miraculously averting what could have been an existential crisis (civil war in a country with 6,0000 nuclear warheads) and with minimal bloodshed, McFaul’s instinctual emotional response is not gratitude and relief but greed and self-assurance, which he immediately uses to further his interventionist dogma. Like someone with a gambling addiction, he thinks: Great, I didn’t lose on that hand. Surely I can win a couple more while I’m hot.

Here was the analysis of ”no comment” Paul Massaro from the The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe:

russia is weaker than ever

— Paul Massaro (@apmassaro3) June 24, 2023

This reaction may take the cake. It’s Peter Ziehan — the guy whose appeal is his ability to discuss geopolitics with the factual rigor and vocal inflections of a gossiping housewife — calling the coup “delicious”:

I cannot not sum up the establishment’s reaction to the weekend’s events any better than venture capitalist David Sacks, whose long-form tweet from Saturday evening I’ll include in full below:

What’s better: negotiated peace or nuclear chaos?

It looks like the crisis in Russia is abating after many premature predictions, dunks, and celebrations. We’ve come to expect such behavior from mids like Kinzinger, but the participation of so many more serious American policy makers and influencers shows the extent to which they have lost perspective.

They expressed glee over the possibility of a coup in the world’s largest nuclear weapons state by a warlord whose main gripe is that Russia has not prosecuted the war vigorously enough, who advocates full mobilization and total war, and is more likely to countenance nuclear use.

I can understand why Ukrainian nationalists — who are desperate to win the war in light of a counteroffensive that even CNN admitted yesterday is thus-far failing — would be willing to roll the dice and root for chaos and civil war in Russia. But for American leaders to do so shows that they have lost any conception of a distinct American national interest.

What the last 24 hours have underscored is that wars are not just incredibly destructive but also incredibly unpredictable. I continue to maintain that it was in the best interest of the United States to avoid this by supporting the Istanbul deal. It would have cost us nothing except an agreement not to add Ukraine to NATO. In fact, this would not have been a cost but a benefit, saving ourselves from the insanity of committing American boys & girls to fight Russia one day on Ukraine’s behalf.

Now the war seems likely to enter an even more desperate stage for both Russia and Ukraine. Is this what we want? History proves that things can always get worse. ISIS was worse than Saddam, Lenin was worse than the Tsar, and Prigozhin could have been worse than Putin. Do we want to keep rolling the dice? Or do we want to figure out how to bring the killing to an end?

By Russell Clark, author of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack

When I managed money, I never worried too much about politics or politicians. I didn’t even bother with central bankers much either (can you imagine!). They would always promise inflation – but were never able to deliver it. There was one big exception to this, which was China.

Whatever the Chinese government said it was going to do, it generally did. But even then, I thought ultimately Chinese policymakers would eventually succumb to free market forces, particularly in terms of the exchange rate – but here I was wrong. A closed capital account, and control of the banking system has made Chinese Yuan exchange rate a policy choice as well. For equity investors, the clearest example of Chinese policy affecting assets is China deciding that “big tech” had too much power and needed to have its wings clipped. The difference in performance gets starker every day.

What I originally thought was that Chinese changes in policy would act as an example for the rest of the world. That China would lead a worldwide swing against pro-capital policies to pro-labour policies. We have seen that to a degree – and certainly I think inflation and interest rates are going to go higher. My favourite trade, Long GLD and Short TLT still appeals to me.

But what I am seeing in currency markets suggest government policy is having a greater effect on assets markets everywhere. Ever since Nixon left the gold standard, generally the world has been moving to free floating exchange rates, determined by market forces. And this force was by and large irresistible – where nations like Mexico, Argentina, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia all eventually forced to free floating exchange rates – and ultimately devalued. Japan had the opposite problem where it spent years trying to devalue, but could not. That has changed in recent years. One traditional very safe trade in currency world was to short the Mexican Peso vs the US dollar. It had a fairly consistent trend of moving sideways for a number of years, and then devaluing to a new lower level, and never recapturing its old value. True to form, Mexico devalued during Covid, but has been appreciating ever since. From a low of 25 Peso to the US dollar during Covid, it now at 17 Peso to the dollar. The Peso has strengthened against the US dollar in an era of US dollar strength. It has also achieved this in a period of relative commodity weakness, which historically has been bad for the Peso.

The corollary to the unexpected strength of the Peso, and been the sustained weakness in the Yen. This was for many years, the antithesis of the Peso. Bouts of yen strength, that then proved difficult to reverse, but moving ever stronger versus the US dollar. Last two years, the Yen has weakened significantly.

On a pure macro view, with Japan and commodity importer, and Mexico a commodity exporter, I would have expected the Yen to strengthen against the Peso, given the weakness in oil prices. I would have been wrong.

A better way to analyse the Mexican peso and the Yen would have been politically. The President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) is definitely a president on the left – favouring labour over capital. In my view, pro-labour governments push for rising wages, and rising interest rates to preserve the buying power of the exchange rate. Bank of Mexico interest rate policy is about as far away as you can get from the QE addicted Western World.

But interest rate policy is not the only factor here. Tariffs on Chinese goods means that a “strong peso” policy can be followed without the risk of factories being relocated to Asia. That is China-US conflict is allowing “left wing” policy makers to adopt pro-labour policies. You are also see many manufacturers are investing into Mexico as an insurance policy on a US-China conflict. Japan does not have this benefit, making the Yen/Peso divergence easier to understand. When we add in the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the negative effect that has on Europe, we can also understand the huge strength of the Peso versus the Norwegian Kroner. Every macro indicator would suggest to own Norwegian Kroner over Mexican Peso (NIIP, Foreign Reserves, CPI etc) – but that would be the wrong trade this year.

Just like China, investors need to pick political winners, not just in equities, but in currency markets too.

Virginia is the latest state to adopt an age-verification law, known as SB 1515 and proposed by Republican state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr., for the internet’s biggest adult websites, including Pornhub. Even before the law went into effect on Saturday, Pornhub blocked users in the state. 

Users with Virginia-based IP addresses are no longer able to browse the world’s most trafficked porn site. According to The Virginian-Pilot, users are greeted with this message: 

“As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website.

“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

The statement continues and says the new law doesn’t properly enforce the age verification requirement. Pornhub offered a solution to protect children: “Identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification.”

“As we’ve seen in other states, [requiring ID] just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place,” the statement reads, adding, “To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.”

Here’s the current landing page for PornHub if you live in Virginia.

Proud of the work we’ve done at @approject to help make this happen. This is a no-brainer to protect kids. Let’s get this done in all 50 states! pic.twitter.com/RUXFAoNBGw

— Jon Schweppe (@JonSchweppe) June 30, 2023

“Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Virginia,” wrote Pornhub. 

… and this is certainly not going to be well received by Virginian users. Blocking access to Pornhub might result in enough angry phone calls and emails to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office. 

However, a spokeswoman for the governor told media outlet WRIC that they stand behind the new law: 

“The governor remains committed to protecting Virginia’s children from dangerous material on the internet.” 

According to Free Speech Coalition, a non-profit adult industry trade association, its ‘Age Verification Bill Tracker‘ shows Louisiana had the first age requirements for adult websites that went into effect in January. Since then, a tidal wave of bills and enforcements has swept across the country. 

The tracker shows Utah’s age requirement law went into effect on May 5, Mississippi and Virginia on July 1, Arkansas on July 31, Arizoinz (if passed) on August 1, Texas on September 1, and Montana on January 1, 2024. 

“It’s not a matter of if these laws will be ruled unconstitutional but when,” Free Speech Coalition’s spokesperson Mike Stabile told WRIC. He noted:

“Adult content–even material harmful to minors– is First Amendment-protected speech and the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that restrictions on its production and consumption face the highest legal bar: strict scrutiny.”

Pornhub is gambling on its users, exerting enough political pressure on Youngkin’s administration to overturn the law. If unsuccessful, the company might see market share in the state dwindle to other sites.

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

After two years of internal discussions, public hearings, and collaboration with stakeholders, California’s reparations task force presented its final report of recommendations to the Legislature June 29.

(L-R) State Sen. Steven Bradford, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, task force member Lisa Holder, and Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer hold up a final report of the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans during a hearing in Sacramento on June 29, 2023. The report heads to lawmakers who will be responsible for turning policy recommendations into legislation. Reparations will not happen until lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom agree. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)

The 1,100-page, 4-inch document discusses policy recommendations for the Legislature to consider, and while no specific dollar amounts are proposed, formulas for calculating harms and repairs are included as guidance for lawmakers.

The report lists five time frames to be considered for reparations dating from 1850 to the present for various harms, including unjust property takings, devaluation of black businesses, housing discrimination, mass incarceration and over-policing, and health-related issues.

“Our descendants will be able to consult this great document and see the evidence that this state has committed crimes against black folks,” said Amos Brown, vice chair of the committee and a member of the board of directors for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), during the meeting.

“It’s time they paid their crime bill.”

Reverend Amos Brown, the vice-chair of the reparations task force, president of the San Francisco Chapter of the NAACP, and longtime pastor of the Third Baptist Church sits for a portrait inside the sanctuary of the church, in San Francisco on June 27, 2023. (Philip Pacheco/AFP via Getty Images)

Established with the passing of Assembly Bill 3121 in May 2021, the task force is composed of nine members, with five appointed by the governor, two by the President pro-Tempore of the Senate, and two by the Speaker of the Assembly. The panel was tasked with studying the impacts of slavery and providing recommendations for reparations to the governor and legislative branches for review.

Payments recommended by the task force are estimated at up to $1.2 million per eligible individual, and some economists calculated the cost to the state at approximately $800 billion if the recommendations are enacted as proposed.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has remained quiet on the topic of cash payment, saying that “reparations are about more than money” in a recent interview with Fox News, and he stressed repeatedly in a May budget press conference that prudence is required by the state during times of economic uncertainty.

Some on the panel are anticipating pushback from the governor and legislators regarding such concerns.

“Don’t come telling us that you don’t have the money,” said Brown, the vice chair.

“From where I come from in Mississippi, they had what you call a layaway plan. And if you can’t pay it because of deficits, deficits don’t last always.”

The state is currently facing a $32 billion budget deficit, which its Legislative Analyst’s Office has said could grow significantly in the event of a recession—which economists suggest is likely to occur later this year.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces the May budget revision in Sacramento on May 12, 2023. Newsom said the state’s budget deficit has grown to nearly $32 billion, about $10 billion more than predicted in January when the governor offered his first budget proposal. (Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

With a $311 billion spending package set for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the recommended reparation payments represent more than two and a half times the state’s annual budget.

Support for the task force at other public hearings and today’s—with elated members of the audience erupting into boisterous applause and impromptu singing on occasion—has been broad and virtually unanimous, but a recent poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonprofit research institution based in San Francisco, suggests that sentiment across the state is divided, with only 43 percent saying they approve of the task force recommendations such as reparations.

Legislators will now be tasked with reviewing the information, and if deemed applicable, to create a package of bills to address the recommendations.

“The final report is not the end of the work. It’s really just the beginning,” Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) told the audience.

“It is now up to the Legislature, which I’m part of, and the governor, to implement it.”

Observing that critics of the proposals note that California was never a slave state and should therefore not be subject to reparations payments, the senator said that other aspects of history need to be considered.

“It was not a slave state in name only. Not in practice, not in deeds,” Bradford said.

“The first governor of this state-owned slaves and was proud of it. We had a fugitive slave law that returned slaves,” after they fled from other states.

People listen to the California reparations task force, a nine-member committee studying restitution proposals for African Americans, at a meeting at Lesser Hall in Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, Calif., on May 6, 2023. (Sophie Austin/AP Photo)

Talking directly to critics that say they should not have to pay for acts committed centuries ago, he questioned their perspective.

“If you can inherit generational wealth, you can inherit generational debt,” Bradford said.

“And this is a debt that is owed.”

Fellow lawmaker and task force member Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) echoed his colleague’s commitment to seeing the recommendations transformed into legislative action.

“Next year we will move with legislative and budget ideas to make it happen,” he said in his final remarks on the report.

Don Tamaki, a task force member and attorney, recognized the thousands of hours of commitment from the Department of Justice and staff that assisted in producing the voluminous document.

“The amount of research and writing that went into this is breathtaking,” he said during the hearing. “This is going to resonate nationally.”

A Reparations Task Force meeting is held online in California on Sept. 23, 2021. (Screenshot via California Reparations Task Force)

Speakers repeatedly thanked California Secretary of State Shirley Weber—who authored the bill in 2020 that led to the task force’s creation when she was an Assemblywoman—for her vision, and Vice Chair Brown personally presented her with a copy of the report.

“There’s tremendous wealth in this,” she told the crowd upon receiving her copy of the final report.

“I am so pleased with the document because it answers every question.”

Weber’s daughter, Assemblywoman Akilah Weber (D-San Diego)—now occupying her mother’s former seat—spoke about the honor she felt at representing the people in attendance, while making one of many comments throughout the day about the encyclopedic size of the report.

“It is long because the harms are long,” she told the crowd at the hearing.

“But this report is phenomenal.”

While an electronic version is available online, one committee member suggested sending a hard copy of the recommendations to all lawmakers, saying its physical presence is impactful.

“I suggest we buy a copy for every member of the Legislature,” said Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles).

“California needs to feel that weight. It weighs a pound of flesh. It weighs 400 years.”

The state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta was on hand to receive his copy of the final report, and he assured the task force and audience that his staff will continue to work toward achieving the goals outlined in the recommendations.

“Reparations are warranted, they are necessary, and they are needed,” he said. “Reparations are our way forward. Solutions must be thoughtful, meaningful, and enduring.”

Recognizing the unprecedented nature of the proposals, Bonta said he hoped that the work of the task force will lead to a nationwide discussion.

“California doing what we so often do,” he told the audience.

“Being first, being bold, being courageous, and bringing solutions to complicated problems.”

The California state capitol building in Sacramento on March 11, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Members of the state’s legislative Black Caucus spoke about their intention to work together with fellow lawmakers to craft bills that can successfully navigate the Legislature.

“We can and must act on these recommendations,” Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) said during the hearing.

“The future of our nation depends on us.”

With some pointing to the price tag as an obstacle to progress for reparations payments, proponents say that with one-half of one percent set aside from the annual budget, it could make fiscal sense, though critics have questioned the mathematical possibility of such a plan.

“Let’s be clear and honest. The cost of reparations will be high, but make no mistake, the harms that are done are just as high,” said Bradford, the task force member and senator. “No one asks how we pay for high-speed rail, which many in the Legislature say is a train to nowhere.”

Michael Shellenberger gave a must-watch keynote address to the students and faculty of the University of Austin this week, titled “Escape The Woke Matrix.”

In it, he argues that Western civilization is being rapidly taken over by a psychopathological religion, and that we must resist it by exposing it for what it is, and re-grounding our institutions in love of humanity, civilization, and freedom.

Shellenberger’s work covers a wide range of topics, but a common theme is the distortion of history and censorship benefiting the powerful.

In this emotional address, Shellenberger discusses the negative effects of censorship, rewriting history, and the power dynamics it serves.

He highlights disparities between the real-world and the one we are delivered by authorities and ‘experts – pointing out the decline in deaths from natural disasters and the fact that police killings in the US, including those of African-Americans, have declined over the years – among others, emphasizing the need for seeking out accurate information.

Shellenberger criticizes the selective disinformation campaigns and censorship surrounding topics like COVID-19, vaccines, and the Hunter Biden laptop; and argues that society is moving towards a new moral order centered around race, victimhood, and identity politics, creating a culture of entitlement and grandiosity.

Finally, Shellenberger points out the presence of narcissistic and psychopathic behavior in positions of power, calling for courage in confronting these cluster B personality types and emphasizes personal responsibility, optimism, and the need to fight for positive change while avoiding toxic ideologies.

As Shellenberger writes at his Public Substack:

“You can hear the emotion in my voice. The global crackdown on free speech has left me feeling angry and afraid. Despite my emotional state, or perhaps because of it, the students gave me a standing ovation at the end.”

…

“It’s not enough to condemn, we must also seek to understand, and explain. We are going toe-to-toe with an opponent that would put us in prison for wrongthink. We must stand up to their bullying, and break their hyponotic trance over the population. That is how we will escape from the woke matrix.”

Watch the full address here…

Subscribers to Michael’s Substack can read the full report here…