Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) is begging Texas Governor Greg Abbott to not send any more illegal aliens to the Windy City — despite the fact that just two years ago she signed measures “strengthening” Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city.
On Sunday, the outgoing mayor sent Abbott a letter, imploring him to make Texas carry the burden of the thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens flooding the border. According to the mayor, the Texas governor is going to begin re-sending illegal immigrants via bus starting Monday to Chicago.
“Since we began responding to the arrival of migrants sent by your delegation in August 2022, we have shouldered the responsibility of caring for more than 8,000 men, women, and children with no resources of their own,” she said in the letter. “That number continues to grow.”
In reality, Lightfoot shouldn’t be surprised Texas sent them her way. She practically asked for these individuals to come to Chicago on multiple occasions. For example, in 2019, she tweeted, “Yes, Chicago must be a sanctuary city.
While the US labors to maintain the unipolar world it leads, a multipolar world is springing up all around it. Africa and Brazil cry for it. China and India support it. Germany has whispered it, and France has called for it. Iran and Saudi Arabia are joining the multipolar Shanghai Cooperation Organization. But the most stunning sign of the reality of the new multipolar world may be the explosive growth of BRICS.
BRICS is an international organization whose primary purpose is to balance US hegemony in a new multipolar world. Its roots go back to 1996 and the emergence of the core group of Russia, India and China (RIC). In 2009, along with Brazil, BRIC held its first summit. In 2010, South Africa joined, and BRICS was formed, making it, perhaps, the only major international body in which representatives of Africa and Latin America have an equal voice.
The group is neither an alliance nor a bloc, and it is not against the United States. But it does seek to end the American led unipolar world and replace it with a world with many poles and many nations with equal voices. With members from almost every continent, the BRICS nations represent 3.2 billion people, or almost 41% of the planet’s population.
And that counterbalance is growing. At the recent BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and Thailand were all welcomed as guests. Turkey, a NATO member, is seeking membership. At their annual summit in South Africa in June, the five BRICS members will discuss enlargement and the nineteen countries that have expressed interest in joining. Thirteen countries have formally requested membership in the multipolar organization, and six have made informal requests. Iran and Saudi Arabia have formally requested membership. Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain and Indonesia are all known to have declared their interest. That list represents another 600 million people and would push BRICS’ share of the global population well past 41%. The list also reportedly includes Mexico and at least three other African nations. Russia has previously said that Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan and Venezuela are also on the list.
In the name of “protecting future generations from potentially devastating consequences,” a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced legislation meant to prevent artificial intelligence from launching nuclear weapons without meaningful human control.
The proposed legislation acknowledges that the Pentagon’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review states that current U.S. policy is to “maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the president to initiate and terminate nuclear weapon employment.”
The bill would codify that policy so that no federal funds could be used “to launch a nuclear weapon [or] select or engage targets for the purposes of launching” nukes.
“As we live in an increasingly digital age, we need to ensure that humans hold the power alone to command, control, and launch nuclear weapons—not robots,” Markey asserted in a statement. “We need to keep humans in the loop on making life-or-death decisions to use deadly force, especially for our most dangerous weapons.”
Buck argued that “while U.S. military use of AI can be appropriate for enhancing national security purposes, use of AI for deploying nuclear weapons without a human chain of command and control is reckless, dangerous, and should be prohibited.”
According to the 2023 AI Index Report—an annual assessment published earlier this month by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence—36% of surveyed AI experts worry about the possibility that automated systems “could cause nuclear-level catastrophe.”
The report followed a February assessment by the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group, that AI and other emerging technologies including lethal autonomous weapons systems and hypersonic missiles pose a potentially existential threat that underscores the need for measures to slow the pace of weaponization.
The answer is simple. He raised issues you aren’t allowed to mention. He went after the CIA, saying he had information from an inside source the agency was involved in the Kennedy assassination. He was a vaccine skeptic and spoke about the interests of Big Pharma in killing us. The deep state couldn’t allow this. Therefore he had to go, and, we predict, he will be lucky if he isn’t arrested on some fraudulent charge.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In order to defeat fascism, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for the military to shut down news agencies that say anything unapproved by the government.
“It’s like, defeating fascism 101,” said Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. “The government takes control of the nation’s media, then silences all the bad people. Fascism solved!”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has demanded the government start with banning Tucker Carlson, followed by several other conservative journalists. “We are in literal danger of falling into fascism until the government locks away all the bad journalists,” explained Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. “Look at China – they are like, so safe from fascism. Do you see anything like January 6th happening in China? I don’t think so. Anyone in China who says anything the government thinks could incite violence, is like, disappeared or something. It’s all worth it if we stop just one Januray 6th.”
According to Democratic leadership, the government’s efforts to beat back fascism will require immediately making a handy “blacklist” to be overseen by the “House Un-American Activities Committee”. “The committee will monitor the news for un-American activities such as saying the government narrative may be wrong,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries. “As the government steadily crushes dissenting speech by labeling it as an ‘incitement to violence’, fascism will be destroyed once and for all.”
At publishing time, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had asked Jen Psaki if the contact lenses she was wearing made her look smart.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation pressures Facebook to take down alleged Russian “disinformation” at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence, according to a senior Ukrainian official who corresponds regularly with the FBI. The same official said that Ukrainian authorities define “disinformation” broadly, flagging many social media accounts and posts that he suggested may simply contradict the Ukrainian government’s narrative.
“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.
“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.'”
Vitiuk, in an interview, said that he is a proponent of free speech and understands concerns around social media censorship. But he also admitted that he and his colleagues take a deliberately expansive view of what counts as “Russian disinformation.”
“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”
In recent weeks, Vitiuk said, Russian forces have used various forms of disinformation to manufacture fake tension between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the four-star general who serves as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military.
Indeed, recent reports have focused on the relationship between the two Ukrainian leaders. The German newspaper Bild reported that Zelenskyy and Zaluzhnyi had argued regarding tactics deployed in the battle over Bakhmut. Vitiuk said that any notion of conflict between Zelenskyy and his military chief, however, is false.
ESG funds have done worse than their S&P counterparts, and the typical ESG fund fees can be three times the reported figure.
Research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology asserts that ESG goals don’t always align with shareholders’ preferences. Even when there is an explicit mandate to pursue social objectives, ESG funds still vote against shareholders.
The allure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals has hypnotized corporate America into offering ESG funds that score investments for prioritizing social goals. Companies that account for environmental, social, and governance goals in their decisions collectively held $8.4 trillion in US investment assets at the beginning of 2022. Leading investment firm BlackRock more than doubled its holdings to over $500 billion and other players are following its lead.
ESG investing is becoming a permanent fixture in the global corporate landscape, but not without backlash. Some entrepreneurs and politicians in the United States argue that prioritizing ESG investing at the expense of shareholder welfare will diminish returns for investors. Strong concerns about the viability of ESG investing led Florida to pull $2 billion worth of assets from BlackRock in a nationwide ESG purge.
But the battle is only heating up because President Joe Biden overturned a Senate bill that prevented fund managers from factoring environmental, social, and governance goals into their investment decisions. In the private sector, tycoons have been launching firms to counter ESG investing by buying shares in companies like Apple and Disney to undercut the activism of management.
Undoubtedly, ESG investing is creating a storm in the United States, but aside from the excitement surrounding ESG investments, what are the implications? Maximizing shareholder welfare is the primary objective of an investment fund and ESG funds should not be pursued if they fail to meet this goal. Some posit that since shareholders are the owners of the company, they must be free to advocate policies that achieve ESG goals. Therefore, ESG investing can be compatible with maximizing shareholder welfare.
However, companies must ensure that shareholders are appreciative of the costs and benefits of ESG investing. Shareholders might perceive virtue in using their investments to effect social change, but learning that ESG funds are uncompetitive will surely alter their outlook. Although research on the feasibility of ESG funds is in its infancy, studies show that they have not been delivering for investors.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has vowed that the new resources will not be utilized to increase audit rates for households earning less than $400,000 per year “relative to historical levels.” She failed to clarify that “historical levels” of enforcement were far higher as recently as one decade ago: audit rates for Americans earning between $25,000 and $200,000 decreased 76% between 2010 and 2019, according to data from the Government Accountability Office.
The IRS is attempting to hire individuals qualified to wield firearms for the tax collection agency’s Criminal Unit as enforcement activities are expected to increase amid a recent funding windfall.
Candidates for the special agent position, which is the only job at the IRS where employees are permitted to carry guns, will be expected to combine their “accounting skills with law enforcement skills to investigate financial crimes,” according to a posting on the IRS website. Individuals interested in the job must be “legally allowed to carry a firearm” and “maintain a level of fitness necessary to effectively respond to life-threatening situations on the job.”
Those who work for the Criminal Unit must also be able to “use firearms in life-threatening situations” to the point of “deadly force.” There are roughly 360 vacancies for the position in some 250 locations across the United States, according to the job application link, which said that salaries for the position range between $53,900 and $94,200.
The job posting from the IRS occurs as the agency works to double its headcount over the next decade as a result of the $80 billion windfall allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRS will hire for the position, in which staff members must work at least 50 hours each week and be available at all hours of the day, through the end of the year.
Biden administration officials have claimed over the past several months that the increased funds will enable IRS staff to more easily assist individuals and businesses attempting to properly file their taxes. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration nevertheless revealed in a report that the agency’s budget for enforcement activities will increase 69% over the next decade while the budget for taxpayer services will increase 9%.
House Republicans successfully voted at the outset of the new Congress to nix the $80 billion allocation, although the repeal is unlikely to pass in the evenly divided Senate and would almost certainly be vetoed by President Joe Biden.
For Aristotle, the path to happiness in the sense of the good life is to live according to one’s nature as a rational/social being. Reason is in the driver’s seat in individual and social matters. This suggests a society based on individualism, persuasion, and trade rather than collectivism, force, and domination. (The Greek philosophers’ politics, however, left much to be desired.) The virtues we associate with the ancient Greeks — such as justice, prudence, moderation, and courage — described this way of living intelligently.
For some time now I’ve thought that many people’s antagonism to the market is motivated not by moral or economic objections but by aesthetic criteria. (I discuss this in What Social Animals Owe to Each Otherand here.)
By that I mean they simply find market relations — involving private property, contracts, profit, competition, and “impersonal forces” such as supply and demand — unattractive, even ugly. They wish society had nothing to do with such relations, which they (mistakenly) believe have displaced the cozy cooperation and communalism that marked an earlier golden age. They long to return to the beautiful but lost Garden of Eden, where markets don’t exist and people can be human again. They make just two errors. First, they misunderstand the market. For example, competition and cooperation go together. And second, the longed-for Eden never existed. Before human beings transformed the earth, nature was a cruel master. People weren’t always so nice either.
The aesthetic rejection of markets could explain why we libertarians have made little progress in persuading people that crony capitalism is significantly different from the free market. The people who find markets ugly don’t care whether businesses get favors from the government or not. That’s not what matters to them.
Something underlies this revulsion at the market and the freedom it entails: self-interest, or what the critics would call selfishness. It’s also been called the pursuit of happiness. (Of course, Ayn Rand, who held that the pursuit of self-interest is entirely proper embraced the word selfishness at least for the shock value. See her book The Virtue of Selfishness.) The aesthetic rejection of markets may rest on an aesthetic reaction to self-interest. The line between ethics and aesthetics can be blurry.
Another American stuck in Sudan called the embassy and State Department “useless”. “To be honest with you, the State Department was useless, utterly useless throughout this entire period,” a man named Imad said in an interview. “We expected the Department to provide some kind of guidance, but the guidance was the template, just shelter in place, no critical information being provided.”
Update(1302ET): Sudan is continuing to stare into the abyss of full-blown civil war as the battle for control of the capital of Khartoum between two rival generals – now reaching the two week mark – results in a mounting death toll. Currently, dozens of countries have for days been racing to get their citizens out via military transport planes, ships, and via cross-border land routes into Ethiopia and neighboring countries, but not the United States.
A surprisingly blunt report voicing intense criticism toward the Biden administration has been issued by CNN Friday, which writes, “As the crisis in Sudan continues to unfold, there is mounting anger among Americans who feel abandoned by the US government and left to navigate the complicated and dangerous situation on their own.”
CNN further points out that robust evacuation efforts are underway by many other countries. As we detailed below, a C-130 evac flight sent by Turkey even took on small arms fire while landing outside the capital. And the Chinese government has said it has successfully evacuated at least 1,300 of its nationals thus far, with state media confirming evacuation operations ongoing by “land and sea”.
“I am incredibly shocked and disgusted by the American lackluster response to the health and safety of their citizens,” Muna Daoud told CNN, whose parents were forced to exit via Port Sudan to Saudi Arabia. And CNN follows with this:
Despite a number of nations evacuating their citizens, the US government has continued to say that the conditions are not conducive to a civilian evacuation. All US government personnel were evacuated in a military operation this weekend. US officials have said they are in “close communication” with US citizens and “actively facilitating” their departure from Sudan.
However, CNN spoke with multiple people whose family members are among the “dozens” of Americans who want to leave Sudan, and they said the State Department has provided “barely any assistance” since the deadly violence between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out more than a week ago.
Another American stuck in Sudan called the embassy and State Department “useless”. “To be honest with you, the State Department was useless, utterly useless throughout this entire period,” a man named Imad said in an interview. “We expected the Department to provide some kind of guidance, but the guidance was the template, just shelter in place, no critical information being provided.”
SCPM: Most Chinese citizens in Sudan have been evacuated or are in the country’s ports pending transfer, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Image: Weibo
Already two American have lost their lives. CNN further presents that more are coming close to getting shot in near-miss situations due to the lack of formal US effort to get citizens safely out:
“The might of our military and resources does not get used to save our lives in war zones,” she said.
When CNN spoke to Daoud, her 69-year-old father and 66-year-old mother – both of whom are US citizens – were making the “harrowing” nine hour bus journey from Khartoum to Port Sudan.
“They had to find a bus this morning after waiting outside on the side of the road,” she said. Daoud said that the bus had been stopped three times by RSF soldiers “and at one checkpoint they held my father at gunpoint because they believed he was in the Sudanese Army.”
“They told all the men to step off the bus and searched and questioned them,” but they kept her father at gunpoint, she described to CNN.
“My mum believed he was going to be taken or shot. Luckily they decided to let him go,” Daoud said.
Meanwhile, Chinese media pundits are mocking and gloating…
China’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed it is sending the PLA Navy to help evacuate Chinese nationals from Sudan, with defense ministry spokesman Tan Kefei announcing Thursday that that morenavy ships are on their way.
Already, Chinese evac ships have been spotted at Sudan ports in the Red Sea:
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