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Former House Majority Leader Claims FBI Is “Ready To Indict” Hillary Clinton

Submitted by Rachel Blevins via TheAntiMedia.org,

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been under investigation by the FBI for several months, and former U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay said Monday that the FBI is “ready to indict” her for using a private email server to conduct government business.

During an interview on “The Steve Malzberg Show,” DeLay, a Republican from Texas, said he has friends in the FBI who tell him “they’re ready to indict” the former Secretary of State.

“They’re ready to recommend an indictment and they also say that if the attorney general does not indict, they’re going public,” DeLay said.

Clinton’s use of personal email on a private server during her tenure as Secretary of State was revealed in March 2015, and while she has maintained that she never sent or received any classified information on the server, her claims have been contradicted by the Intelligence Community.

Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 14, revealing that not only did “several dozen” of Clinton’s emails contain classified information, but some of the information was classified as SAP or “special access programs,” which is beyond top secret.

“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element,” McCullough wrote. “These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels. According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.”

DeLay said he believes Clinton is “going to have to face these charges” eventually, whether it’s through an FBI indictment or through the “public eye.”

“One way or another either she’s going to be indicted and that process begins, or we try her in the public eye with her campaign,” DeLay said. “One way or another she’s going to have to face these charges.”

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About That 1980 Iowa Debate Ronald Reagan Skipped

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s Twitter squad is pushing the idea that Donald Trump rage-quitting the Fox News debate because he thinks Megyn Kelly is mean to him makes him as presidential as Ronald Reagan, because Reagan also skipped a GOP debate in Iowa.

For all his faults, Ronald Reagan ran a campaign of optimism and small government in 1980. That campaign ended in a landslide over incumbent Jimmy “malaise forever” Carter. No one would mistake the “Trump train” and its never-ending anger, xenophobia, and even class envy for a campaign of optimism. Sure, Trump, like Reagan, wants to “make America great again,” but Trump’s vision doesn’t include America as a “shining city on a hill” for the world to aspire to. It involves a giant wall.

More importantly, and this ought to be obvious, the context of Reagan’s decision to skip the 1980 debate is different than the context of Trump’s decision. Reagan was not in a petty feud with the Des Moines Register at the time. His campaign manager simply believed that as the frontrunner, Reagan was above the debate. Only five of the nine Republicans vying for the nomination participated in the debate. That debate was the first Republican primary debate since 1948. It was not planned to be a televised debate—that came later. And after Reagan’s loss in Iowa, he pivoted, ignoring his campaign manager’s advice and deciding not to skip future debates.

That’s very different from the circumstances surrounding Trump’s decision. While you can’t necessarily expect more from Trump’s political supporters (or any kind of partisan fanatics), you should expect more from news outlets than passing off a decontextualized factoid in the course of their reporting.

Check out that 1980 debate below, which has very little resemblance in tone and presentation from debates “these days.”

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Effort to Remove Outdated Adultery Law Fails in Virginia

Rings Last week, the Virginia Senate killed a bill that would have decriminalized adultery in the state—voiding a law that has been used to tack criminal penalties onto more than eight cases over the past decade.

Introduced by Sen. Scott Surovell (D–Fairfax), SB 174 would have reduced adultery from a criminal issue to a civil one, maintaining the small associated fine (no more than $250). As it currently stands, adultery is a Class 4 misdemeanor. Although this might not sound like severe government intrusion at first glance, Virginia is a stubborn outlier compared to other states, 13 of which have repealed similar adultery statutes in recent years. Today, only about a dozen states still treat the act as a crime.

The bill was killed after minimal debate, with several notable Democrats (including former gubernatorial hopeful Creigh Deeds of the 25th District) voting against it. If passed, SB 174 would not have had a significant fiscal impact on the state, but as divorce attorneys in Virginia point out, a criminal adultery conviction can affect how assets are divided up in divorce proceedings as well as alimony payments.

Additionally, the fact that the matter remains criminal often complicates divorce proceedings, as it allows cheating spouses to plead the Fifth and protect themselves against self-incrimination. For this reason, Surovell’s bill was endorsed by Family Foundation, a social conservative organization focused on promoting a “biblical worldview” that believes demoting the matter to a civil issue would provide more recourse for wronged spouses.

Albeit rarely used, the adultery statute still affects ordinary people and forces the state’s legal system to commit time and resources to enforcing morality. John R. Bushey Jr. of Luray, a prominent lawyer, was convicted under the adultery statute in 2004. Exhausted from a long legal battle after much flip-flopping between guilty and innocent pleas, Bushey finally accepted community service. The case generated widespread pushback againt the outdated law. As Jonathon Turley wrote for The Washington Post that year:

Imagine the work for the courts if prosecutors vigorously enforced the laws against fornication, which is generally defined as premarital sex — a crime that a 1988 study found was practiced by more than 75 percent of women and more than 80 percent of men by the age of 19.

Despite Maryland’s modest $10 adultery fine and D.C.’s complete removal of adultery laws from the books, Virginia remains firmly committed to intruding in people’s lives over moral questions like adultery.

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Tax-Free Tampons Are a Matter of ‘Social Justice,’ Say California Lawmakers

Why should women have to pay a tax on tampons and menstrual pads, which are surely more necessity than luxury? Perhaps because we all pay sales taxes on all sorts of goods—food, toilet paper, shoes—that are an integral part of modern life. But according to certain California lawmakers and the state’s tax board, the sales tax on menstrual products is sexist and must be abolished.

On Tuesday, the California Board of Equalization—the agency in charge of administering California’s sales, use, fuel, and vice taxes—endorsed Assembly Bill 1561, which would make menstrual products exempt from sales tax. The measure is co-sponsored by California Assemblymembers Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) and Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond) as a way to “bring more gender equity to California’s tax code,” according to a press release from Garcia’s office.

“Effectively we are being taxed for being born as women,” she said. “AB 1561 is about social justice [and] an opportunity to end an outdated tax that uniquely targets women for a function of their body, a function we don’t control and can’t ignore every month of our adult life.”

Currently, five U.S. states—Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland— exempt menstrual products from sales tax.

There tend to be two libertarian camps on sales taxes, which can be described reductively as either 1) screw sales tax, because screw all taxes, or 2) sales taxes are a good alternative to income taxes for raising government funds. But I think we can all agree that if sales taxes exist, they should be straightforward and applied equally across broad categories. Randomly selecting certain products for exemption based on the idea that they’re more or less essential to daily life than others is just a recipe for complication and special-interest-mongering. (Just look at the arcane patchwork of rules concerning food taxes in California, which leave bureaucrats perpetually arguing over things like whether a frozen sandwich microwaved at a gas station counts as a hot or cold food for tax purposes.)

Garcia and Chang argue that for extremely poor women, buying tampons or pads each month is a severe financial burden which we need to mitigate. But is it more of a burden than buying, say, contact lens? Toothpaste? Toilet paper? At least there are reusable options for menstrual products; you can’t reuse toilet paper or toothpaste.

Of course, exempting menstrual products from sales tax is only a stepping stone as far as Garcia is concerned. Her end goal is to “make these essential products free or covered by insurance for women,” she said.

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FOMC Preview: “A Rate Cut Is Very Much In The Mix”

While the odds of a rate hike have collapsed since The Fed's decision to hike rates in the middle of an industrial and earnings recession, the odds of a rate cut remain non-negligible.

As investors await the Fed’s announcement following today’s FOMC meeting, Bloomberg's Richard Breslow they have a conundrum. No change in rates is expected. That is pretty much taken as a given. But we have to add the sub-clause: in either direction. What an interesting concept.

This is the first meeting we can remember where serious and important market participants differed so strongly on the issue of what they ought to do. It’s not just hold or raise, cut is very much in the mix.

The Fed, and then traders, are having to navigate through the existential argument whether the U.S. economy, and by extension, the global economy, are putting in place the pieces to kickstart momentum or are in a perilous negative feedback loop.

Markets are expecting to hear the Fed stress the full employment argument, with fingers crossed behind their backs. They haven’t come this far, only to stray from message weeks later at the first headwind. No one really believes, however, that they have fully abandoned the central bank put.

Futures pricing suggests the market is having nothing to do with claims of bold resolve. If they ignore recent market turmoil March could become “live” again. The Treasury short end is not at all prepared for this. Overt dovishness will wipe out rate rise expectations for the whole of 2016 and (gasp) further.

The toughest challenge will be how they handle the dollar. An inevitable consequence of a “still on-track message” will be U.S. currency strength. Exporters won’t like it. More importantly, it will weigh on oil prices and the yuan, the two main culprits cited for market (equity) turbulence.

The Fed will be looking for increasingly easy policy from other central banks to help them through this rate hike experiment. Usually I would tell them, “lots of luck.” But they may have caught their peers at just the right moment when their conflicting imperatives allow for policies that can be complimentary to each other’s needs. Rare outside of an outright crisis situation

However, the bulls remain hopeful for a "passive hawkish" Fed according to RBS strategists led by John Briggs…

U.S. rate market has potential to “react to even subtle shifts in tone, let alone language” in today’s FOMC statement.

A neutral, “passive hawkish” case would include downgraded growth language, unchanged or further improved labor market outlook, recognition and dismissal of lower market-based inflation compensation levels.

Dovish case would include mention of concern about "international developments," or a shift to "nearly balanced" from "balanced" risks, or concern about inflation expectations.

Of course we leave it to Jeffrey Gundlach to explain just what Janet and her friends need to do (and what the consequences are if they do not)…

"they have got to dial this [hawkish] rhetoric back or the markets are going to humiliate them."

Gundlach slams the #Fed – here’s are his shocking comments https://t.co/epPyuSdKp5

— CNBC's Fast Money (@CNBCFastMoney) January 25, 2016

Some would argue that has already begun…

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Ugly 5 Year Auction Results In Biggest Tail In Months

While many were surprised when yesterday’s 2 Year auction saw absolutely blistering demand, including a near record Indirect take down and a yield stopping deeply through the When Issued, none of that was on display in today’s 5 Year auction which concluded moments ago when the Treasury sold $35 billion of Cusip N89 at a yield of 1.496%. The problem: this was 0.9 bps wide of the When Issued and the biggest tail since June 2015. Then again, as SMRA notes, “Five-year note auctions have a tendency to stop fairly wide of the 100pm WI bid side though – in both directions.”

Today it was in the wrong direction.

It wasn’t just the pricing that was weak, it was the internals as well where Directs dipped to 8.6%, the lowest since October, Indirects likewise had little interest taking down 53.5% at a whopping 98.3% hit rate, which meant Dealers had to sop up the bulk of the auction picking up 37.8% of the paper, the most since August 2015.

Perhaps the only silver lining was the Bid to Cover which rebounded from last month’s 2.32, the lowest since 2009, rising modestly to 2.44.

Perhaps the reserve liquidators who showed such interest in the short-end of the curve, are a little too pregnant with paper in the belly: we will find out for sure tomorrow when the 7 Year auction prices. If, likewise, it is a poor showing, then one can slowly build a representation of where “Indirects” are over exposed in terms of inventory.

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These Two Commodity “Experts” May Not Have Long To Live

There is reason for the saying “never say never”, as demonstrated vividly by these two energy experts:

Mark Fisher:

And Dennis Gartman:

Perhaps it is not too late to buy life insurance on behalf of one – or both – of these world-renowned commodity gurus?

h/t @GreekFire23

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US Economy: On A Knife’s Edge

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Gross Output Remains Under Pressure

We should mention right from the outset that recent data releases – weak as most of them were – are still not confirming an imminent recession with certainty. The situation remains a bit fuzzy: we see a lot of weakness in important data, and considering the overall picture – which includes what is happening globally – we can infer that the likelihood of a significant economic downturn this year is extremely high, but it’s not inevitable. While it is still possible that a recession can be dodged this year, that seems a low probability outcome by now.

img_7122-hdr

Last week the government has updated the gross output (GO) per industry data, which means we now have the picture until the end of Q3 2015. In terms of GDP, Q3 wasn’t much to write home about either (2% real), and we can see from GO that there has been weakness in quite a few business areas. The parts of the economy that are responsible for the bulk of wealth creation didn’t really do all too well. Our suspicion that the trends observed in the Q2 gross output data would continue has been confirmed – and in all likelihood, Q4 will once again show weakness. Below we compare the y/y change rates of selected gross output data to those of new orders for capital goods and industrial production.

The lines ending in Q3 show the gross output data of: all private industries, mining, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade. As you can see, only retail sales managed to show positive growth momentum among these – growth in every other sector (including the combined data) has weakened further, with manufacturing, mining and wholesale trade all in negative territory (note that utilities and construction output, which are not shown above, both grew). The black line depicts the growth rate of new orders for non-defense capital goods, the purple line (which is the most up-to-date series at the moment) shows the y/y rate of change in industrial production – which has likewise turned negative – click to enlarge.

The data shown above are definitely consistent with what is normally seen at the onset of recessions. However, there are historical examples of “false positives”, one of which we will discuss further below, as it seems relevant to the current situation. First a few more words on gross output though. As he always does when the data are updated, Mark Skousen has discussed them as well and has published an update of the adjusted GO/GDP growth comparison chart:

Via Dr. Skousen: adjusted GO vs GDP, quarterly change, nominal – – click to enlarge.

We quote from his comments:

“Gross output (GO), the new measure of U. S. economic activity published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, slowed significantly in the 3rd quarter of 2015. And the Skousen B2B Index actually fell slightly in real terms in the 3rdquarter. Both data suggest the possibility of a mild recession developing in 2016.

Based on data released today by the BEA and adjusted to include all sales throughout the production process, real GO grew by only 2.5% in the 3rd quarter of 2015, almost half the rate in the 2nd quarter (4.6%). Adjusted GO reached $39.2 trillion in the 3rd quarter, more than double the size of GDP ($18.0 trillion).

In nominal terms, the adjusted GO growth rate declined from 6.3% in Q2 to 2.3% in Q3. In the same period GDP fell from 6.0% to 2.7%, illustrating the higher degree of volatility of GO compared to GDP (see chart below). The higher volatility indicates that GO might be a better indicator of economic activity than GDP, since GO includes economic activity that GDP leaves out.”

(emphasis added)

Dr. Skousen is only looking for a mild recession at present. As he remarks further:

“The GO data and my own B 2B Index demonstrate that total US economic activity has slowed dramatically. A recession could develop in 2016, although I expect it to be mild.

B2B spending is in fact a pretty good indicator of where the economy is headed, since it measures spending in the entire supply chain, and it indicates tepid growth and maybe even a downturn.”

We should perhaps add that as far as we are aware, Dr. Skousen is by nature an optimist…:). Considering that the GO data only show the situation up to the end of Q3 and we have in the meantime seen further weakness in assorted surveys, gross output has likely continued to worsen. Much will also depend on developments in the rest of the world and future trends in money supply and credit growth. If e.g. China’s credit bubble were to suffer a serious contraction, it would likely have wide-ranging effects.

Recent Survey Data

The Philly Fed and Dallas Fed manufacturing surveys were recently released. The former came in “less bad than expected”, but remained in negative territory. Apparently one of the reasons for the somewhat slower pace of contraction was a notable downward revision of the data of previous months, so one can hardly call the release “good news”.

The Dallas survey was an unmitigated disaster that made landfall way outside the range of what were already very modest expectations. The consensus was for the headline index to clock in at minus 14, which sounds grim enough (with expectations ranging from -10 to -17). The actual number was a rather more alarming minus 34.6. The production index was a negative standout, plunging a full 22.9 points from 12.7 to minus 10.2. Here is a chart of these particular catastrophes:

Dallas manufacturing survey – production nosedives, and the headline index enters territory usually associated with severe recessions – click to enlarge.

Obviously, the Dallas survey is strongly influenced by troubles in the oil patch. More on this follows further below, but first we want to show two comparison charts our friend Michael Pollaro has mailed to us, which compare the new order data of the two surveys with the average of the new orders indexes of all regional surveys and the national ISM new order component:

New orders: Philly Fed survey (January) – red line; average of all district surveys (as of Dec. 2015) – black line; ISM (as of Dec. 2015) – blue line – click to enlarge.

New orders: Dallas Fed survey (January) – red line; average of all district surveys (as of Dec. 2015) – black line; ISM (as of Dec. 2015) – blue line – click to enlarge.

National ISM figures always lag in downturns and overall tend to act a bit better than many of the more volatile regional data, but it is to be expected that the gap to the regional average will soon narrow.

The Significance of the Oil Price Crash

The last time a sharp downturn in Texas was clearly triggered by an oil price crash was in 1986. The size and speed of the plunge in crude oil prices at the time was comparable to the recent decline and economic conditions in the region deteriorated significantly. Below is a chart of the Texas leading index published by the Fed. Whenever it has declined to near its current level in the past, a nation-wide recession either soon followed or was already underway – except in 1986:

Texas leading index: a decline to current levels was usually associated with impending nation-wide recessions, but the 1986 oil price crash caused a downturn that remained confined to the region – click to enlarge.

It appears that many observers believe that the current downturn is ultimately going to result in a similar outcome. There are certainly many parallels to the 1986 event, but we believe it does not necessarily follow that it will remain similarly well contained this time around. We would actually argue that the current downturn has to be more serious and will have more far-reaching effects than the one in 1986.

The recent shale boom was of different magnitude and importance, and has made a major contribution to capex and employment growth in the post GFC recovery. US oil production has more than doubled, returning to levels last seen 40+ years ago. The debt growth associated with the boom has been quite stunning as well. The economy overall has been a lot weaker than in the mid to late 1980s, so it stands to reason that the current boom’s demise will be of greater moment than the oil bust of 1986.

In addition, the still growing problems in the junk bond market are providing indirect evidence that the negative effects of the energy bust are rather unlikely to remain confined to the main oil-producing regions.

Merrill US high yield Master II Index and CCC and below effective yields – the surge in yields continues – click to enlarge.

As an aside: the S&L crisis, the 1987 stock market crash and the recession of 1990 all followed shortly after the 1986 oil crash, which was probably no coincidence.

Conclusion

We may not yet have final confirmation that a recession is imminent, but so far nothing suggests that the danger has receded.

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Southern Californians Prefer Driving, Not Trains—News at Eleven

But they're so photogenic! City planners in Los Angeles who think (albeit very incorrectly) that they have control over how residents live are famously pushing for general plan to “get people out of their cars” in this massive city and onto bikes or into mass transit and creating communities nestled around transit hubs. It’s called their Mobility Plan 2035. It would recast the city with a heavy emphasis on pedestrian and bicycle traffic, possibly at the expense of supporting motor vehicles.

There’s a slight problem with such a plan: This does not appear to be how the citizens of Los Angeles actually want to live. Use of mass transit in Los Angeles and Orange County continues to decline even as more and more money is thrown at it. To the extent that residents rely on mass transit, they seem to prefer buses to light rail, and when the costs of riding buses goes up and the availability or quality of service goes down, riders take a hike. From the Los Angeles Times:

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region’s largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county’s only transit option.

Most other agencies fare no better. In Orange County, bus ridership plummeted 30% in the last seven years, while some smaller bus operators across the region have experienced declines approaching 25%. In the last two years alone, a Metro study found that 16 transit providers in Los Angeles County saw average quarterly declines of 4% to 5%.

Officials say they think ridership will improve once everybody starts living according to their master plan of “walkable neighborhoods near transit stops.” Mind you, “walkable neighborhoods near transit stops” has been the urban design holy grail since forever, but this time they really mean it! Others have doubts:

[S]ome experts say the downturn could represent a permanent shift in how people get around, propelled by a changing job market, falling gas prices, fare increases, declining immigration and the growing popularity of other transportation options, including bicycling and ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft.

“I don’t know if this is long-term, but it doesn’t feel like it’s temporary when we’ve been dealing with 36 straight months of declining ridership,” said Darrell Johnson, chief executive of the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Call it the “libertarian moment” of transportation. People are choosing transportation models that work for them, not because it’s what city planners would like for them to use. Light rail is one of the least flexible manifestations of mass transit, but look at the priorities of Los Angeles:

Although buses account for about 75% of Metro’s ridership, rail operations and construction receive more money than buses do from Measure R, the county’s most recent half-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects.

Metro has worked to speed up some bus routes, including giving buses their own lanes during rush hour on Wilshire Boulevard, the most traveled corridor in the county. The majority of buses, however, crawl through the streets at rush hour, and passengers often complain about long travel times.

“There’s been lots of focus by transit agencies on shiny new things, sometimes at the expense of bus routes which serve the primary constituencies of transit agencies: low-wage workers,” said Brian Taylor, the director of UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies. “Lots of resources are being put into a few high-profile lines that often carry a smaller number of riders compared to bus routes.”

Even poorer immigrants rely on mass transportation less and less the longer they live in the Los Angeles area. In addition, Metro has cut bus service by hundreds of thousands of hours and raised rates. Transit services in the region are now trying to figure out how to reverse this behavior and improve bus service, lower costs, and maybe even partner with ride-sharing services to bridge gaps in physical distance.

And of course, we love our cars. The amount of miles being driven in the area has returned to pre-recession levels. The Times story ends on the anecdote of a woman who moved to Los Angeles, used light rail for a few years, got robbed recently outside the city’s newest light rail station in Culver City, got a car, and is much happier.

The aspiring actor said that getting a car resulted in “opening up her experiences in L.A.” which must feel like a kick in the crotch of Los Angeles city planners. The demographics of their mobility plan start off by stating the exact opposite of what this trend is showing, stating that more people are looking for alternatives to driving.

The numbers the report show to justify this emphasis on walking and biking are kind of hilarious. They note that 64,000 people walk to work and 16,000 people bicycle to work. That’s a 56 percent increase between 2000 and 2010. But the population of city of Los Angeles (just the city, not the surrounding county) is close to 4 million. Work commutes only account for 5 percent of all walking trips and 16 percent of all biking trips. But that means the city calculates about 100,000 people biking, less than one percent of the city’s population, over which they’re considering making massive changes to streets.

There’s one statistic reference in the plan that’s particularly worth highlighting, because it demonstrates a particular mindset that shows the gap between planners and citizens. The report notes that 47 percent of all trips in greater Los Angeles are less than three miles, which they classify as “within walking/biking distance.” It notes that 84 percent of these trips are currently made by car. This is clearly data being used to push the “get them out of the cars” mentality forward.

Let’s talk about the privilege of the well-heeled urban elite for a moment. Time is a cost. These planners absolutely know that. They actually hope that traffic congestion will prompt more people to seek alternatives to driving because of how it affects their time. They recognize that losing time can be a significant inconvenience.

But when you’re poor, unskilled labor, your time is almost all you have as a bargaining tool. Succeeding in low-level service jobs is often dependent on reliability, availability, and punctuality. Your time is what your employer needs from you and it is generally what he or she is paying you for. “Time is money” is not a metaphor.

The idea that people can just substitute a five-minute drive to travel three miles with a much longer bicycle ride or an extremely long walk is an example of privilege in action. Those who have to turn to mass transit as a necessity already lose a significant amount of time out of their “budget” waiting and transferring and dealing with the inconveniences. There is a sort of willfully blind absurdity in the idea that a significant number of Angelinos can just throw away an hour or so of their time for a three-mile trip. Maybe the type of people who come up with these goals can, but they seem fairly removed from the considerations of the average citizenry.

As for the city’s efforts to force development over to planned transit hubs, they’ve hit a bit of a snag: Existing residents don’t like the idea of giant, dense projects bulking up their neighborhoods. And in Los Angeles in particular (and California in general), NIMBY types (often wealthy urbanites) are able to use the courts to block projects. Right now there’s an effort to put a measure on the ballot to force a moratorium on large new development projects that bypass existing zoning rules. It recently got the support of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.

For a transportation plan that accommodates both drivers and the more popular bus transit for the needy in Los Angeles, check out the Reason Foundation’s Increasing Mobility in Southern California: A New Approach. And watch below for an explanation why Los Angeles should stop trying to be like New York when it comes to transportation planning:

Oh, and one last thing to point out: The buses in Los Angeles operate on compressed natural gas (CNG), which burns more cleanly than gasoline. So when Los Angeles spends all its money on trains and cuts back on buses, prompting citizens to turn back to cars for transportation, this actually increases air pollution in the city. Something to keep in mind.

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Refugee Murders 22-Year-Old Swedish Woman In Knife Attack

As you might have heard, the European Union is on the brink of collapse.

The bloc has been inundated with asylum seekers from the war-torn Mid-East and the influx of refugees now threatens to shatter the Schengen dream. Some European officials (most notably Angela Merkel) are fighting to preserve Europe’s open borders but others have reached their breaking point with what they see as a hostile foreign invasion.

Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders even went so far as to call Arab migrants “Islamic testosterone bombs” who need to be “locked” in asylum centers to prevent them from waging a “sexual jihad” on Dutch women.

Wilders was referencing widespread reports of sexual assaults allegedly perpetrated by men and male teenagers “of Arab origin.” These attacks began to make international headlines after eyewitnesses in Cologne, Germany went public with accounts of an apparent sexual melee that unfolded in the city center on New Year’s Eve. Women, the reports indicated, were assaulted by “gangs” of refugees who groped them and in some cases robbed them.

Once the Cologne attacks became big news, Nyheter Idag released an investigative report alleging prominent Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter sought to conceal from the public a wave of sexual assaults at a youth festival and concert in central Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården last August. Dagens Nyheter denied the allegations, saying it was in fact Swedish police that were responsible for the coverup.

Swedish politicians promised a thorough investigation into the matter and voiced their disgust for the alleged attacks.

“This is a very big problem for those affected and for the whole of our country,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said. “We will not budge an inch, and we should not look away.”

Well if Löfven thought roving gangs of teenage refugees groping girls at concerts was a “big problem,” he has an even bigger issue now because on Monday, 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher was stabbed to death by a 15-year-old migrant at an asylum center.

“Mezher began working at an asylum center in the city of Molndal, helping unaccompanied minor migrants adapt to life in their adopted home,” The Washington Post writes. “She was killed by one of those young migrants.”

“It is so terrible. She was a person who wanted to do good,” Mezher’s cousin said “And then he murdered her when she was doing her job.”

She had only worked at the center for “a few months” according to Expressen, who adds that “the company that runs [the Molndal house] has many similar places throughout western Sweden.”

This is a “terrible crime” PM Löfven said, after visiting the scene. “It was messy, of course, a crime scene with blood,” police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg recalled.

“The symbolism of Mezher’s slaying was not lost on the country’s politicians,” WaPo continues, noting that Löfven took to the air waves following the young woman’s death to acknowledge the country’s growing disaffection with the refugee situation. “I believe that there are quite many people in Sweden who feel a lot of concern that there can be more cases of this kind,” he told Radio Sweden.

Yes Mr. Löfven, we “believe” that you are correct and make no mistake, if European politicans do not find an effective way to get the situation under control, the public will remove them – either with the ballot or with the torches and pitchforks.

On that note we close with one more quote from Mezher’s relatives:

“It is the Swedish politicians’ fault that she is dead.”

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