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David Stockman: Janet Yellen’s Return and the Financial Storm Ahead

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2021

By the time Yellen became Fed Chairman in February 2014, however, there was no plausible excuse for keeping Bernanke’s bloated Fed balance sheet in place or continuing to keep interest rates at the zero bound. If there was ever a chance to normalize Bernanke’s misbegotten Depression-fighting policy, it was during the 48 months of Yellen’s term.

Needless to say, Yellen’s Fed did no such thing. After 45 years of devotion to the 1960s Keynesian bathtub theory of full employment economics, Yellen kept real interest rates buried in negative territory during the entirety of her term, and not just marginally.

https://www.newsmax.com/Finance/DavidStockman/janet-yellen-fed-economy-invest/2016/02/15/id/714444/

The operative words here are “European countries” and “add accommodation.” Yet even a brief reflection on those items demonstrates that Janet is a delusional Simpleton.

https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-janet-yellens-return-and-the-financial-storm-ahead/

by David Stockman

Janet Yellen is back.

Naturally, the follies of Keynesian central banking come to mind.

In many ways, Yellen’s tenure as Fed chairman was far worse than Ben Bernanke’s. At least Bernanke’s money-printing madness was undergirded by his credentials as a misguided scholar of the Great Depression and the mistaken conclusion that the Wall Street meltdown of September 2008 was the prelude to another such occurrence.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by way too much Fed-fostered foreign borrowing on Wall Street during the roaring twenties. It stimulated an unsustainable boom in US exports—soaring domestic CapEx in order to expand production capacity and a stock bubble–fueled consumer-spending boom in cars, radios and appliances. Therefore, when the Wall Street bubble burst in October 1929, foreign borrowing dried up, US exports and CapEx crashed and spending on consumer durables plummeted.

This was the cause of the massive contraction in 1930–1933, which took the GDP down from $95 billion to $58 billion in dollars of the day. By contrast, it had nothing to do with Milton Friedman’s crashing M-1 (money supply), which was a consequence of unavoidable and necessary bad debt liquidation by the banking system. Nor did it stem from any lack of credit availability to solvent borrowers, as demonstrated by market interest rates that remained ultralow (under 2%) throughout the downturn.

The depression of 1930–1933 wasn’t owing to the stinginess of the Fed, which actually expanded its balance sheet by 72% between August 1929 and early 1933.

Consequently, Bernanke’s maneuver of flooding the zone with fiat credit during 2009–2013 was a mistaken page from Milton Friedman’s counterfactual playbook, which was wrong the day it was written in the early 1960s and even more wrong when Bernanke cut and pasted it into his PhD thesis at MIT in 1979.

The 16% Trimmed Mean CPI increased by an average of 1.90% per annum during that four-year period, while the Fed’s target interest rate averaged just 0.40%.

During the sweet spot of the longest business cycle expansion in history—from month #55 to month #103—when the economy should have been left to expand on its own without “stimulus” from the central banking branch of the state, Yellen kept real money market rates pinned at an unprecedented -150 basis points.

The justification for such economic insanity was the claim that the US economy was not at its full-employment level as measured by the dubious U-3 unemployment rate and that the job of the central bank was to keep injecting “demand” into the economy until the bathtub was full to the brim and 100% of “potential GDP” was attained.

But here’s the thing. Potential GDP and full-employment labor markets are Keynesian malarkey.

In a world in which domestic labor competes with China’s price for goods, India’s price for internet-based services and Mexico’s price for manufactured goods assembly, full employment cannot be measured by the headcount metrics of the BLS, nor can it be achieved by injecting massive amounts of fiat credit into the bank accounts of Wall Street dealers.

In fact, with total outstanding credit now at $81 trillion, or 382% of GDP, the Fed’s liquidity injections never really leave the canyons of Wall Street. The result is increased speculation on Wall Street and accelerating inflation of financial asset prices.

After all, money markets do not finance the working capital or fixed asset investments of business, nor do they fund consumer borrowing for automobiles and durables. Instead, short-term money markets are where Wall Street dealers finance their inventory and where speculators fund their positions in the options markets—or via margin and repo credit against stocks and bonds held outright.

Consequently, negative real interest rates are the mother’s milk of financial speculation and the resulting asset price bubbles.

Yellen’s policies constituted an epic monetary error that has fueled bond- and stock -market bubbles that are off the charts, thereby sending erroneous price signals to Wall Street gamblers, corporate C-suites and spendthrift politicians alike.

The yawning gap below between the purple line, signifying (the running inflation rate) and the brown line (the money market rate) connotes the massive subsidy Yellen’s Fed conferred on speculators and day traders.

Real Cost of Money Market Borrowings, 2014–2018: 16% Trimmed Mean CPI Less Fed Funds Rate

In short, Yellen sowed the wind of monetary excess, and now we are reaping the whirlwind of a gargantuan Wall Street bubble that is a clear and present danger to the economic future—because it will crash, and the resulting financial and economic damage will be biblical.

Ironically, Janet Yellen may be sitting in the captain’s chair when the most violent and destructive financial storm in history finally comes ashore. It would serve her right.

Editor’s Note: The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past.

That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s.

Click here to download the free PDF now.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bernanke, Fed, Financial Storm, Great Depression, Janet yellen, Keynesian | Leave a Comment »

Why do hypocritical officials violate their own COVID rules? « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2021

You don’t have to be smart, you don’t have to understand all the intricate details of the fake test, the fake case and death numbers based on the test. You just need to understand enough.

You just need to be clued in.

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/01/01/why-do-hypocritical-officials-violate-their-own-covid-rules/

by Jon Rappoport

The latest example of hypocrisy is Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus advisor. It turns out she traveled to meet her family for Thanksgiving after telling Americans not to travel, not to gather with family outside their immediate households.

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, told the public they should celebrate Thanksgiving outdoors. Then he was caught having dinner, indoors, at a restaurant, unmasked, with 12 people.

There are other examples.

The usual explanation: these officials are arrogant and believe they’re above the law. They want to thumb their noses at the little people.

Yes, no doubt. But a more direct reason is staring us in the face.

The hypocritical officials know the whole COVID pandemic is a fraud.

They know there is no danger.

They know the lockdowns are unnecessary.

That’s why these officials break their own rules.

Why would they expose themselves to “the virus,” unless they knew they were safe?

Some of them believe they’re trapped in a political apparatus that offers no exit. They must go along with the show. They must participate in the fraud because, for example, federal dollars flow into their states, and those dollars are contingent on “playing the COVID game.”

Other officials have been bribed, blackmailed, threatened.

Regardless, they know they can flout their own rules because there is no health risk, no danger.

The risk is on the level of betting on a boxing match, when the bout is fixed, and you know who will win.

People will say, “These officials aren’t smart enough to figure out COVID is a fraud.”

You don’t have to be smart, you don’t have to understand all the intricate details of the fake test, the fake case and death numbers based on the test. You just need to understand enough.

You just need to be clued in.

This would suggest the COVID fraud is an open secret, shared by many in power. I believe that is exactly the case.

For purposes of comparison, consider a level of “secret understanding” slightly above that of politicians. Government scientists.

These scientists are fully aware that the PCR test for COVID is a complete hoax—for reasons I’ve detailed over the past nine months. Therefore, the scientists also know the case numbers based on those tests are fraudulent. And they know the case numbers are used as the rationale for the lockdowns.

That’s a lot of knowing. That’s a lot of “open secret.”

Here’s another comparison. PCR techs in labs all over the world, who are running the test, are fully cognizant of the crimes they’re committing every day—by utilizing “too many cycles” and therefore destroying any shred of validity when diagnosing ANYTHING.

Sharing this open secret among themselves, they otherwise remain silent.

Getting the picture?

The open secret of the COVID fraud isn’t confined to a dozen people in a sealed room. It’s high and wide. It’s understood by many in positions of power and responsibility, all over the world.

You can add your own lists of “secret sharers.” Mainstream physicians, for example. Physicians who are in charge of administering the COVID vaccines they know are unnecessary and dangerous. They also remain silent. So do certain news media people.

And since there are so many people who know the real score, we can begin to see the degree and extent of complicity that is driving the whole pandemic hoax.

This isn’t only a small conspiracy of movers and shakers who planned it and launched it.

This is a very wide-ranging conspiracy of silence.

“Don’t blame me. I’m just following orders.”

“But you know COVID is a total fraud.”

“Of course I know.”

“And you know others who know.”

“Many others.”

“Case closed.”

Which is to say, case WIDE OPEN.

The COVID situation is directly analogous to the Nazi, USSR, and Chinese bureaucracies; faceless workers passing on and obeying orders.

Many of the workers know those orders, no matter how they are dressed up, are arbitrary and evil.

The orders are initiated to destroy lives and freedom, and are transferred through the human machinery of The Complicit Silent Ones.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: COVID rules, Deborah Birx, Gavin Newsom, hypocritical, lockdowns | Leave a Comment »

Decentralize New York City! | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2021

https://mises.org/wire/decentralize-new-york-city

Gregory Bresiger

New York’s Forgotten Borough Is Persecuted

Some New Yorkers have a devolution message for our Manhattan elites: let us go.

The battle between liberty and runaway big government is a history of imperious empires crushing political, economic, and geographic minorities. We see such a battle in New York City, whose Manhattan-based municipal government, operating in a mostly one-party system, persecutes a unique part of the city called Staten Island as well other distant areas.

The city’s enforcement of covid regulations has been harsh on the island. Staten Island’s bars and restaurants have been badly hurt by city and state regulations. But Staten Islanders, whose political preferences are different from those of the city’s ruling powers, had had many grievances for years before the covid lockdowns.

A Battle for Local Liberty

Staten Island is so unlike the rest of New York City that many of its citizens have been trying to win a decentralization battle for decades. Indeed, in the 1993 municipal elections Staten Islanders voted overwhelmingly to leave New York City.

Ultimately, Staten Island and some other overtaxed New Yorkers in this mismanaged sprawling city hate being governed by a Manhattan ruling class that often scorns and misunderstands “outer borough” residents. (i.e., those not living in Manhattan). This Manhattan ruling class quietly regards most of us as bunch of Guidos, Archie Bunkers, or local Babbitts. We are the New York City version of “deplorables.”

It is the essence of imperious government: a big political unit will not let a small unit quietly succeed. The nature of imperial government is always to hold on to everything.

Staten Island to the Mayor—We’re Not Like You

Staten Island, unlike most of the radical leftist parts of New York City, is somewhat right-wing. It went for President Trump in the last election. It is more suburban that the rest of the city. It has a lot of Italo-Americans. It has different attitudes about the police than much of the rest of the city, especially a city council and mayor who have reduced police funding. Staten Island residents depend less on the egregious city/state transportation systems through their nightmare government agency, the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority), and more on the use of private cars.

Republicans Joe Borelli and Steven Matteo, two city council members, recently offered legislation to create a task force to examine the feasibility of Staten Island seceding from the left-leaning Big Apple.

“If the city wants to continue going in a radical progressive direction, please just leave us behind!” said Borelli. He believes left-wing mayor Bill de Blasio has no understanding of the borough. “Just consistently when there’s issues for Staten Island, we just don’t get a big reaction from City Hall.”

Not Like the Rest of the Big Apple

Part of the city government disconnect is Staten Island’s uniqueness. It is the least populated borough, with only some four hundred thousand. That means its voice is hardly heard in a city of over 8 million. It has many reasons to want to escape from the tyranny of a majority but a huge city government that won’t let it go.

“The city is fighting a war on the cars we need to drive,” Borelli said. He added that many city officials “loathe police officers many [of whom] live here. Why wouldn’t Staten Island want to secede?”

Borelli also said he believes residents of the so-called forgotten borough will back secession because they’re on the short end of the city’s unfair property tax system. He says it favors neighborhoods where property values have skyrocketed, such as Park Slope in Brooklyn, where Mayor De Blasio owns property.

The city government’s inability to effectively govern goes beyond one borough. As a result of a program of aggressive expansion in the nineteenth century, New York City is unlike almost any other city: it is five entire counties. Most big cities are the biggest part of one county; not five entire counties. Each of New York’s five boroughs is unique.

Escape from Tax Hell

Many of Staten Island’s taxpayers, like many other New Yorkers, also want to separate from a place Money magazine once called “tax hell.”

This is because the city chronically overspends. New York City’s government payrolls have been exploding throughout the De Blasio mayoralty. These have been big spending years. The city virtually faces bankruptcy next year. De Blasio concedes that unless the coming Biden administration bails out the city, it will face economic disaster. Under almost any circumstances, the taxpayers will face bigger tax bills. Tens of thousands aren’t waiting for next year’s crisis: they’ve moved.

De Blasio, an unpopular radical leftist and onetime supporter of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, was asked about the secession efforts. “I can’t imagine New York City without Staten Island,” he said.

But many Staten Islanders can.

In 1993, they voted about two-to-one in a nonbinding referendum to seceed and become the independent city of Staten Island. The measure was sent to the state legislature. But the referendum was later invalidated. Staten Island advocates hadn’t received “a home rule” approval message from the New York City Council.

Imagine if before American revolutionaries had begun their fight they had asked the permission of the British Parliament?

A Felon Determines the Island’s Fate

The New York State Assembly speaker, New York City Democrat Sheldon Silver, citing the lack of a home rule message, ignored the referendum when it was presented in Albany. Silver, in a reaction typical of the lawmaker presiding over an empire, said he didn’t want to be the one who helped break up the city. Like so many New York pols, Silver was later convicted of corruption.

Still, De Blasio and other city power players should be concerned about more than Staten Island. Once the independent spirit is awakened in an oppressed people, such as New Yorkers suffering under more than a century of socialist centralization, where would it stop if it were followed to its logical conclusions? The city’s politically oppressed aren’t limited to Staten Island.

The Once Great City of Kings

And Brooklyn in the nineteenth century became one of the biggest cities in the nation until “the crime of ’98.” This was the referendum that was narrowly approved in the 1890s that joined the borough of Kings and extinguished the independence of parts of the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens in a centralist movement called consolidation.

Brooklyn’s great newspaper, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, opposed the referendum, warning that it would destroy Brooklyn’s economy: “Manhattan’s elite gave up on the idea of upward mobility. And Brooklyn paid the price.”

Indeed, after Brooklyn had lost its status as a great city, Brooklynite novelist Pete Hamill would write of his beloved borough, “[A]n inner voice always seems to whisper: There was another place before and it was better than this.”

The Bronx was also ruined by joining the city. It was once an industrial hub, especially the southern part of the borough. The South Bronx became one of the most infamous examples of urban blight, a place my family fled in the 1960s. Those neighborhoods have long since lost their industry, because city officials sacrificed it to a god called Manhattan.

The Jeffersonian Staten Island Sensibility

Staten Island is part of the huge badly governed city of New York. Many Staten Islanders believe local control would improve their quality of life. These liberty-minded folks believe in the Jeffersonian idea that the smallest government tends to be the least objectable. It tends to be more responsive since it is closer to the governed.

Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, agreed.

“Brooklyn and all the other boroughs would all be better off on their own,” wrote Jacobs over sixty years ago. Her criticism that consolidation was flawed was amazingly prophetic.

“The richest borough, Manhattan, has received some economic and cultural benefits, and the others have been stultified in their development. Big bureaucracies,” she wrote, “can’t allow for the diversity and the experimentation that are essential to cities.”

Indeed, true diversity and entrepreneurship arise best from the smallest, most decentralized units of government. Not surprisingly, one of the greatest libertarian historians, Lord Acton, said the issue of centralization versus decentralization is one of the most important themes in history.

A Flawed NYC

But this flawed leftist ruling class imposing centralization is unfit to govern us, or anybody, given the widespread venality, overspending, municipal socialism, and countless other forms of mismanagement. But some of it is understandable. It’s tough to govern people you don’t understand.

Most city officials have either lived all their lives in Manhattan or moved to Manhattan once they became power players.

I believe Lord Acton would have understood the frustrations of Staten Islanders, their anger with being governed by a huge, distant centralized city government.

He warned of “the threat to freedom from centralized governmental absolutism, the tyranny of the majority, bureaucratic administration, democracy and socialism.” Acton could have been speaking about Staten Island today or thirty years ago.

“It is bad to be oppressed by a minority,” Acton wrote, “but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.” Author:

Gregory Bresiger

Gregory Bresiger (GregoryBresiger.com) is an independent business journalist who lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. He is the author of MoneySense, a forthcoming book of basic of money management with a libertarian point of view.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Big Apple, Decentralize, Joe Borelli, New York City, Staten Island, Steven Matteo, Tax Hell | Leave a Comment »

Make A New Year’s Conflagration

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2021

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: conflagration, stoicism | Leave a Comment »

Who Pays Income Taxes: Tax Year 2018 – Foundation – National Taxpayers Union

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2021

https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/who-pays-income-taxes-tax-year-2018

by Demian Brady

Introduction

Many left-leaning politicians have argued that the tax system is rigged to benefit those at the top and that the wealthy are not paying their “fair share” of taxes. These claims overlook the starkly progressive nature of America’s income tax code. The code has become increasingly progressive over the past several decades, and despite much political rhetoric to the contrary, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) made it even more progressive by shifting a greater share of the income tax burden to the top earners.

New data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the first tax year under the TCJA confirms that even as the tax reform law reduced top marginal tax rates, the top income earners shouldered a larger share of the income tax burden, far exceeding their adjusted gross income share. Lower income earners are largely spared from income taxes and actually paid a smaller share under the TCJA’s reforms.

New Data Highlights Progressivity of the Income Tax Code under the TCJA

Each fall the IRS’s Statistics of Income division publishes data showing the share of taxes paid by taxpayers across ranges of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). The most recent release covers Tax Year 2018 (filed in 2019).^[1] This is the first year of reported data under the changes in the TCJA which lowered tax rates, nearly doubled the standard deduction, and expanded the child tax credit.

The new data shows that the top 1 percent of earners (with incomes over $540,009) paid over 40 percent of all income taxes. Despite the tax rate reductions associated with TCJA, this figure is up slightly from the previous tax year’s 38.5 percent share. In fact, NTUF has compiled historical IRS data tracking the distribution of the federal income tax burden back to 1980 and this is the highest share recorded over that period, topping 2007’s 39.8 percent income tax share for the top 1 percent. The amount of taxes paid in this percentile is nearly twice as much their adjusted gross income (AGI) share.

The top 10 percent of earners bore responsibility for over 71 percent of all income taxes paid and the top 25 percent paid 87 percent of all income taxes. Both of those figures represent an increased tax share compared to 2017. The top fifty percent of filers earned 88 percent of all income and were responsible for 97 percent of all income taxes paid in 2018.

The other half of earners (with incomes less than $43,614) took home 11.6 percent of total nation-wide income (a slight increase from 11.3 percent in 2017) and owed 2.9 percent of all income taxes in 2018, compared to 3.1 percent in 2017.

As NTUF reported earlier this year, the number of filers with no income tax liability increased from 2017 to 2018 to 34.7 percent.^[2] The number of nontaxable returns is often related to the economy: as employment decreases and income falls, the number of filers facing no income taxes tends to increase, and vice versa. While 2018 saw a strong economy that would ordinarily increase the number of individuals with income tax burdens, the TCJA removed additional people from income tax rolls by increasing the standard deduction and expanding refundable credits.

Historical Comparison

As noted above, NTUF has compiled historical IRS data tracking the distribution of the federal income tax burden back to 1980. In that year, the income tax share of the top one percent of filers was 19 percent – less than half of what it is now (40 percent). This is despite the fact that the top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent in 1980 and has since fallen to 37 percent in 2018.^[3]

On the other side of the income spectrum, the bottom 50 percent’s income tax burden has been significantly reduced over the past forty years. In 1980, it stood at 7 percent. That dropped to a low of 2.4 percent in 2010 during the recession. As the economy gradually improved after the recession, the tax share of this income group gradually increased to 3.1 percent in 2017. Although the economy remained strong in 2018, this group’s tax share fell from the previous year. This can be attributable in part to the lower rates and higher standard deduction enacted in the TCJA along with its additional provisions designed to ease burdens low-income earners such as the increased child tax credit.

The trends are clear: the code has become increasingly progressive, and when people are allowed to keep more of their own money, they prosper, move up the economic ladder, and pay a bigger part of the income tax bill for those who aren’t.

Tax Cuts and Tax Fairness

Democratic party leaders have taken rhetorical shots against tax reform bill since it was introduced back in 2017. During the debate, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) went so far as to call the TCJA the “worst bill in the history of the United States Congress.”^[4] Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also disparaged the bill as a “product that no one can be proud of and everyone should be ashamed of.”^[5]

Progressives continue to assail the TCJA in the years since its passage. A few days before the election, the Center for American Progress, a self-described “progressive” policy institute, called the tax system “unfair” and said the results of the TCJA were a “hugely regressive tax cut.”^[6]

This ignores that most taxpayers paid less thanks to the TCJA.

See the rest here

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: income tax, IRS, National Taxpayers Union, Progressivity, TCJA | Leave a Comment »

Happy Kwanzaa! The Holiday Brought to You by the FBI – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2021

Kwanzaa emerged not from Africa, but from the FBI’s COINTELPRO. It is a holiday celebrated exclusively by idiot white liberals. Black people celebrate Christmas.

https://www.takimag.com/article/happy-kwanzaa-the-holiday-brought-to-you-by-the-fbi-3/print

Ann Coulter

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris recently tweeted:

“Our Kwanzaa celebrations are one of my favorite childhood memories. The whole family would gather around across multiple generations and we’d tell stories and light the candles. Whether you’re celebrating this year with those you live with or over Zoom, happy Kwanzaa!”

Post some pictures, Kamala! We’d love to see your Brahmin and Jamaican grandparents sitting around the Kwanzaa candles recalling celebrations way back when they were three or four years younger. (The Washington Post‘s “Fact Checker” should start counting Kamala’s lies!)

Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 (when Kamala was 2 years old) by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Karenga — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural gibberish that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves.

In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. (It’s the same function MSNBC serves today.) “Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.”

By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.

Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. The United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (I will not be shooting any Black Panthers this week because I am Kwanzaa-reform, and we are not that observant.)

It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.

In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the ’70s, Karenga was quick to criticize Nigerian newspapers that claimed that certain American black radicals were CIA operatives.

Now we know the truth: The FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police. Whether Karenga was a willing FBI dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. The left has forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot two Black Panthers to death on the UCLA campus: Al “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as the chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University at Long Beach.

(Speaking of which, the cheap labor lobby certainly was right about how the GOP could easily win over “natural conservative” Hispanics. Look at how California has swung decisively to the right since Hispanics became the largest ethnic group there! Good luck winning California now, Democrats!)

The esteemed Cal State professor Karenga’s invented holiday is a nutty blend of schmaltzy ’60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another invention of The Worst Generation.

In 1974, Patty Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, famously posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snakehead stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani. These are the exact same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa praises collectivism in every possible area of life. It takes a village to raise a police snitch!

When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from “classical Marxism,” he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites. (And here’s something interesting: Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.)

While taking the “best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism” (Is that the mass murder or the seizure of private property?), Karenga said Kawaida practitioners believe one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.”

There’s an inclusive philosophy for you!

Sing to “Jingle Bells”:

Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!

Kwanzaa emerged not from Africa, but from the FBI’s COINTELPRO. It is a holiday celebrated exclusively by idiot white liberals. Black people celebrate Christmas.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Black Panthers, FBI, Kamala Harris, Kwanzaa, Maulana Karenga, United Slaves | Leave a Comment »

The Burning Platform

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2021

We have a nation of infants sucking on pacifiers while trapped in their cribs by sociopathic parents/politicians. Infants are incapable of critical thought, must be fed to survive, and diapered at all times. Sounds like the majority of adult Americans today, except the diaper is on the other end.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2020/12/31/give-me-liberty-or-give-me-a-face-diaper/

Patrick Henry and "Give Me Liberty!" – Lesson Plan

This is my face diaper" Mask by Pnwswag | Redbubble

One month ago I wrote an article – Silent Obedient Consent – about our day in Cape May Lighthouse State Park and my disappointment in seeing so many perfectly healthy young people obediently wearing their face muzzles, as dictated by government bureaucrats, on a bright crisp autumn day in a 244 acre state wild preserve. I found it sad that so many could be controlled so easily by so few.

Since my state has been on lockdown since our escape to Cape May and the weather has been cold, wet and snowy, we’ve been mostly cooped up in our home prison. The fear propaganda campaign has worked wonders, as our traditional Christmas Eve bash with 50 or so relatives and neighbors, was limited to six relatives. Monday, when I saw the temperature was going to 48 with bright sunshine, I insisted we needed to go to the 3,500 acre Valley Forge National Park to take a long walk.

Valley Forge Park Visitor and Tourism Information

We have lived eleven miles from Valley Forge Park for the last twenty-five years. I’m a student of history, so living this close to a national treasure, where a ragtag army of farmers showed tremendous fortitude and courage during the brutal deathly Winter of 1777-78, has been an endless source of enjoyment and learning for me, my wife and sons. The walking trails wind through beautiful rolling hills of trees, dotted with soldier quarters as they appeared 242 years ago.

Valley Forge National Historical Park in King of Prussia, PA

Many an afternoon did we hike up Mount Joy over the mountain to reach General Washington’s headquarters. The museum on the headquarters site is filled with interactive displays describing the tremendous sacrifices made by these men to keep a the hopes of a fledgling country alive. You can’t help but be inspired by the bravery and courage of these men. They left their families and were willing to die for a cause that seemed unreachable. They were willing to sacrifice their lives to gain freedom from tyrannical monarch mandates.

Inventory and Monitoring at Valley Forge National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

The park rangers have always been friendly and helpful. We signed our two youngest sons up for a program where we took them there every Saturday and they were trained as recruits in the Continental Army with pretend muskets. It was fun for them and they learned about an important event in the founding of our country. Our three boys were full of energy and we would do the five mile trek around the park every time. They would roller blade, scooter or walk, but we always made two stops. One was the battery of cannons, where they would imagine blasting some redcoats.

The other was a huge climbing tree which we assumed was around in 1778 when General Baron von Steuben was drilling his Continental Army recruits, instilling discipline and teaching them tactics. Picturing the past heroic actions of true patriots is easy to do at Valley Forge. When we could get them down from the branches we would set the timer on our camera and take a picture for posterity.

All of my memories of time spent at Valley Forge Park were positive, until this past Monday. Once again, I was aghast at what I witnessed on a sunny brisk winter day. At first I was surprised at the huge number of cars in the parking lot. Many people had the same idea, as indoor dining has been banned by Generalissimo Baron von Wolf for the last month. Our level of enthusiasm for our enjoyable trek through this national treasure of a park waned immediately as we witnessed hundreds upon hundreds of young people, families, bikers, and joggers fully muzzled, as demanded by covid czar Dick/Rachel Levine and dictator in chief – Tom Wolf.

Family walking with their dog in park and wearing mask - Promise

How to keep kids safe during this COVID-19 summer | UCHealth Today

We were going to enjoy our unmasked walk no matter how many compliant sheep we had to pass. Lone bikers, near no one, were masked. Lone joggers were masked. One jogger would pull up her mask when she passed someone and then pull it down after passing. Little kids were masked. Mothers, fathers, teens on dates, and young guys were all masked.

I couldn’t help but think how government school indoctrination had worked wonders on these obedient serfs. Have years of helicopter parenting created such a pathetic generation of infant like rule followers? Are they so willfully ignorant they can’t do the basic research to realize masks don’t work, based on CDC studies and the actual case rates in states and cities with mandatory masking and lockdowns?

Based on my observations, at least 60% of these people, out getting exercise and fresh air (not too fresh with a filthy diaper on their faces), were obeying their tyrannical politicians and bureaucrats, or entrapped in fear by a flu with a 99.7% survival rate. We didn’t have the slightest hesitancy in walking next to or passing others resisters (aka anti-maskers, aka granny killers) who chose to live on the edge by breathing fresh air. I never have a problem choosing not to be one of the crowd and not following the lemmings.

A Fable for Our Time: Why Lemmings Jump Off Cliffs | Arranology

The most embarrassing aspect of our afternoon was when fully masked sheeple would take a wide berth into the grass when they saw we were un-muzzled. They treated us like plague carrying super spreaders. This happened at least a half dozen times. When we passed two young fully masked parents pushing a stroller with an infant sucking on his pacifier, I jokingly said to my wife that I should patent a face mask with a built in pacifier. Too late. They already sell them on the internet. We truly must be living in some dystopian Twilight Zone episode.

If it was in my power, anyone who willingly wears a mask in the fresh air should be required to wear this mask. It would represent the infantilization of Americans during this era of idiocracy.

As we passed maskers by the dozens on the walking path, I found myself wondering if any of these people appreciated the irony of the cowardice and dishonor shown to those brave, honorable men who spent a brutal winter battling bitter cold, snow, starvation, typhus, small pox, dysentery, and the threat of attack from the most powerful army on the planet only thirty miles away in Philadelphia. These men faced death every moment of their existence. Meanwhile, our current army of Valley Forge maskers cower from the phantom menace of a highly non-lethal flu bug.

The Continental Army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania | Britannica

There are hundreds of statues scattered throughout the park honoring the patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice to create a new nation of self-reliant, strong, independent minded, citizens who didn’t require coddling by a massive overbearing Federal government. They just wanted to be left alone to work their farms, raise their families, and live as free men. Statues to honor our current day “heroes” would look like this.

Pennsylvania plans 'small steps' toward economic reopening; Murphy says N.J. needs federal help, more coronavirus testing capacity

When assessing the state of our nation, it is always a prudent choice to seek out the wisdom of our founding father who led the troops at Valley Forge – George Washington. I think the quote below captures the essence of what has been happening in this country over the last ten months.

The downward spiral crisis in this country is reflected in the apparent trivial submission of a vast swath of the populace to a psychotic belief a thin piece of cloth will save them from a moderately annoying flu that won’t kill 99.9% of Americans. This is a turning point in the history of our country. And not one which will go down in glory, taught in history books as a story of courageousness, fortitude, bravery and common sense.

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”― George Washington

If General George Washington was alive today, he would be praying for the end of this societal mass delusion and for leaders who were not cunning, ambitious, unprincipled and intent on destroying everything he fought for during those times that tried men’s souls. The subversion of power by a cadre of extremely wealthy globalist traitors has succeeded beyond their expectations.

The future of our country hangs in the balance, just as it did in the Winter of 1777/78. The question is whether we remain sunshine patriots wearing masks as demanded by the monarchy or will we stand now, shed our masks and fight the tyranny engulfing this nation. The choice is ours.

George Washington at Valley Forge - YouTube

“However political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” ― George Washington

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: economy, Lockdown, OBEDIENT CONSENT, politics, Social Issues | Leave a Comment »

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Dark Past of Biden’s Nominee for National Intelligence Director – Consortiumnews

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2021

There were three controversial areas where Haines made a name for herself and for which she should have to answer in a confirmation hearing: The CIA’s refusal to release the Senate Torture Report and the decision to hack into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computer system; the CIA’s decision to not punish those officers who carried out the hack and who killed and tortured prisoners beyond even what the Justice Department said was permissible; and the government’s drone program, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were killed.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/29/john-kiriakou-the-dark-past-of-bidens-nominee-for-national-intelligence-director/

By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News

Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who has disingenuously argued for years that he had nothing to do with the agency’s torture program, but who continued to defend it, has taken himself out of the running to be President-elect Joe Biden’s new CIA director.

The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell movement, and it’s a great thing for all Americans. Now, though, we have to turn our attention to Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines.

Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community. A longtime Biden aide, she has the president-elect’s confidence. But that’s not good enough. Haines is exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be in a position of authority in intelligence. She is the kind of neoliberal intelligence apologist whom so many of us have opposed for so many years. Don’t just take my word for it, though. Look at her record.

Haines first began working for Biden when she served as deputy general counsel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was its chairman. When Biden became vice president in 2009, Haines moved to the State Department, where she was the assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs. After only a year, she moved to the White House, where she became deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs, the National Security Council’s chief attorney.

Avril Haines, at center facing, with President Barack Obama at right, and other aides, July 13, 2015. (White House Flickr, Pete Souza)

That’s quite a position. What it means was that her job was to legally justify President Barack Obama’s decisions on such intelligence issues as drone strikes and whether to release the CIA Torture Report. She served there under CIA Director John Brennan. Obama apparently liked the job she did for him because in 2013, he named Haines deputy director of the CIA (DD/CIA).

Haines was the first woman to be named DD/CIA, and she served again under Brennan, who proved time and again that he was no fan of congressional oversight. Haines’s attitude was similar to Brennan’s: The CIA was going to do what it was going to do, and she would make no apologies for it.

Drone “pilots” launch an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for a raid in the Middle East. (U.S. military)

Haines’ Torture Cover-Up

You may recall that in December 2014, the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a heavily redacted version of the executive summary of the committee’s torture report, the result of years of investigation using primary-source CIA documents. The executive summary was about 525 pages long, just a fraction of the nearly 6,000-page complete report. And the release of the 525 pages was the result of protracted negotiations between the committee and the CIA.

In the end, the public heard a few details of what the CIA’s prisoners underwent at secret prisons around the world. But the full story was never made public. It likely never will be. And that’s thanks to Avril Haines.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2010. (Steve Jurvetson, Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier that year, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor in a very unusual display and accused CIA Director Brennan of spying on her committee’s staff members. Specifically, Feinstein said that CIA officers had hacked into the Senate’s computers to see what it was that committee investigators were focusing on.

The hacking was unprecedented, and Feinstein referred it to the Justice Department for prosecution. Attorney General Eric Holder, however, chose not to pursue the case. Brennan took responsibility for ordering the hacking and he made no apologies for it. But his top aide, his assistant, his legal adviser through the episode was Avril Haines. She has never explained her decisions in support of the hack.

Furthermore, it was Haines who overruled the CIA’s inspector general and who decided not to punish those CIA officers who hacked into the committee’s computers, or those CIA officers who had gone over and above what the Justice Department had authorized in its “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” program, killing and maiming prisoners.

In the end, not only were no CIA officers punished, but the leaders and most prominent officers in the torture program were promoted, in some cases into some of the most sought-after positions in the CIA. I know this to be true. I worked for them.

Haines and Drones

One area in which Haines has not received a great deal of media coverage has been her role in the drone program. When Haines was the National Security Council’s top lawyer, Brennan was the keeper of the so-called kill list. It was Haines who took phone calls in the middle of the night asking her for legal authority — permission — to launch missile attacks from drones. She has never answered for her actions.

Now is the time for Americans to put down their collective foot on Biden’s national security appointees. Morell was utterly inappropriate for a senior position in the Biden national security apparatus. Haines is, too. She has, very simply, committed crimes against humanity. I’m under no illusions that Biden is a progressive or that he will differ greatly from previous Democratic presidents on national security.

But I do believe that wrong is wrong. Avril Haines is exactly the kind of person we don’t want running the Intelligence Community. This is the moment for opponents of her nomination to lobby senators on the Intelligence Committee. There’s still time to defeat her.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Avril Haines, Biden, DD/CIA, National Intelligence Director, Senate torture report | Leave a Comment »

Larry Summers Reminds Us That Federal “Stimulus” Mostly Exists to Help Wall Street | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2021

But Summers’s opposition isn’t because he’s a deficit hawk or in any way opposed to government spending. No, his opposition is due to the fact that he’s afraid giving money directly to the average American—instead of his friends on Wall Street—would “risk a temporary overheat” of the economy.

Translation: people who aren’t billionaire CEOs might spend the money incorrectly.

https://mises.org/wire/larry-summers-reminds-us-federal-stimulus-mostly-exists-help-wall-street

Over the past two weeks in Washington, the battle has raged over whether or not the latest so-called stimulus bill should include direct payments to Americans. This would be the second round of direct payments, which were sent out back in April as part of a $2 trillion spending package. The first stimulus checks were $1,200 per individual or $2,400 per married couple filing jointly, plus $500 per child under seventeen.

In mid-December, Congress approved a smaller second payment at $600 per adult and $600 for children. But President Trump, ever the populist, refused to sign off on that deal and instead demanded a larger payment of $2000. Recognizing which way the political wind is blowing, the Democrats approved the increase in the House, but the effort has stalled in the Senate under GOP leadership.

One would think this issue would be a slam dunk for most allies of the Democratic Party, but the old Wall Street antipopulist wing of the Clinton-Obama axis is leading a small revolt against the idea of giving stimulus to anyone but Wall Street bankers and bond brokers.

There is, for example, Larry Summers.

Summers is a former secretary of the Treasury (under Clinton), a former World Bank technocrat, and an advisor to both Obama and Biden. He was also formerly the president of Harvard, where he now teaches.

When Summer speaks, it’s a safe bet that his opinions well reflect those of the technocracy, Wall Street, and the wealthy “elites” of America’s ruling class.

He’s also a self-described Keynesian economist, and all this means is that Summers is an enthusiastic supporter of bailouts, easy money, and endless government spending.

Whether following the 2008 financial crisis, or during the covid panic of 2020, Summers has supported doling out cheap and free money to Wall Street firms and huge banks in seemingly endless amounts. He has rarely met a corporate bailout he didn’t like.

But when it comes to giving money directly to the taxpayers, well, that’s where he draws the line.

Summers made this clear in an interview with Bloomberglast week, declaring he’s “not even sure [he’s] so enthusiastic about the $600 checks.” He’s definitely not excited about $2,000 checks, which he described as “a pretty serious mistake.”1

Translation: people who aren’t billionaire CEOs might spend the money incorrectly.

This is not surprising, as it is similar to the position Summers took during the Great Recession. In those days, Summers steadfastly opposed any financial relief for foreclosing homeowners, but “[a]t the same time, he supported every bailout of financial firms.”

Those bailouts, by the way, continue today. While many defenders of bailouts claim the bailout money was distributed merely as loans and was thus paid back by all those wonderful bankers, this ignores some key facts. Investment firms that invested in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the days following the 2008 financial crises were directly subsidized and bailed out by the Fed, which purchased more than 2 trillion dollars’ worth of MBS. These assets remain on the Fed’s books today, which means MBS investors essentially received free money for what would have quickly become near-worthless investments. This was done in order to ensure the prices of these assets did not collapse as they should have.

The truth is that when it comes to bailing out Wall Street, those who support bailouts hardly limit themselves to loans.

Are Ordinary Americans Doing Fine?

Summers further asserts that there is no shortage of demand among Americans. That is, the problem isn’t a lack of funds among Americans, but the fact that people aren’t permitted to spend because “they can’t take a flight or go to a restaurant.” People have money, he insists. They just can’t do much with it. Thus, he concludes, “I don’t necessarily think that the priority should be on promoting consumer spending beyond where we are now.”

Many Americans, however, are likely to disagree. Food banks report that demand “has greatly intensified since March,” especially among workers in the food service industry and among employees at “mom and pop” stores. USA Today reports more than 6 million households missed their rent or mortgage payments in September.

Studies also suggest that at least among a segment of the population—i.e., the lower-income or unemployed segment—stimulus money is quickly spent on necessities like food and rent, and catching up on bills.

Summers is right, of course, that some people just sat on their stimulus money. According to a study from Northwestern University, people with more than $3,000 in their checking accounts did not rush out and spend their first-round stimulus checks. Other data suggests many people used the money to pay down debts. These higher-income stimulus recipients are also likely the driving force behind the fact that the US savings rate is at historic highs right now.

But the fact many are “hoarding” stimulus money only further disproves Summers’s analysis. If it is the case that a sizable number of Americans are simply saving their stimulus checks or paying down debt, there’s no risk of any short term “overheating” of the economy. Both hoarding and paying down debt are deflationary acts, so by Summers’s Keynesian standards, it follows that opposing stimulus checks to ordinary people isn’t really something we need to worry about after all.

Now, I don’t mention any of this because I think stimulus checks of any size are a good idea. Bailouts and government stimulus of all types are extremely damaging economically. Whether directed at billionaires or at mechanics, stimulus payments and programs—especially of the type funded by newly printed money—create bubbles and result in wealth destruction. We’ve examined this countless times here on mises.org.

But it is nonetheless important to note that the mainstream, establishment Keynesian view is one closely wedded to the idea that it’s billionaires and investment bankers who deserve bailouts and not ordinary people. People like Summers would have us believe that it’s fiscally irresponsible to give money away to regular folks but printing up $7 trillion in new money in order to buy up government and corporate debt all makes perfect sense. This first started to become undeniably clear in the days following the 2008 financial crisis. But now it’s become more apparent than ever.

And it must never be forgotten that the severity of the current crisis was made far worse by policies that Summers and his fellows supported: lockdowns of businesses, stay-at-home orders, and monetary policies that favor wealthy borrowers over middle-class savers. This crisis is largely of their making. But should Summers’s victims get a bailout? Well, that’s just crazy talk in his view.

For people who remain mystified as to how populists like Donald Trump get elected, they need not look much further than this.

1. Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist who is married to an heiress and who is another reliable old partisan of the ruling class, agrees with Summers. He writes that a “$2000 untargeted giveaway, in many cases to people who don’t need the help, is crazy.” Thomas L. Friedman (@tomfriedman), “We need to take care of Americans hurting because of Covid-19. We need to buttress our cities that are running out of money. We need to invest in infrastructure. But a $2000 untargeted giveaway, in many cases to people who don’t need the help, is crazy. Can we stop and think?,” Twitter, Dec. 30, 2020.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Keynesian, Larry Summers, MBS, stimulus, Wall Street | Leave a Comment »

Happy New Year

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2020

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Happy New Year | Leave a Comment »

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New York’s Forgotten Borough Is Persecuted

A Battle for Local Liberty

Staten Island to the Mayor—We’re Not Like You

Not Like the Rest of the Big Apple

Escape from Tax Hell

A Felon Determines the Island’s Fate

More NYC Oppression Stories

The Once Great City of Kings

The Jeffersonian Staten Island Sensibility

A Flawed NYC

Introduction

New Data Highlights Progressivity of the Income Tax Code under the TCJA

Historical Comparison

Tax Cuts and Tax Fairness

Are Ordinary Americans Doing Fine?