Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that on Tuesday shipping containers were added to the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, serving as a blockade, as the city declared a state of emergency earlier in December to deal with the surge of illegal immigrants crossing into the US.
Abbott tweeted on Wednesday, “Texas is adding shipping containers to the US-Mexico border in El Paso. This is in addition to the razor wire and National Guard. Together, the strategies are causing illegal immigration at that location to plummet.”
As The Post Millennial reported on December 14, El Paso has seen an average of 2,460 illegal immigrants cross into the US daily. That figure surged in the preliminary lead up to the expiration of Title 42,, which gave officials the ability to expel illegal immigrants over health concerns.
On December 19, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a stay on the lifting of Title 42, originally scheduled to expire on December 21, and the pause has stalled the surge of border crossers entering the US.
Shipping containers may provide a decent stop-gap solution in highly trafficked areas, but fall far short of a comprehensive border wall solution.
At least 40 counties in Texas reportedly passed or considered resolutions last year claiming illegal immigration is an “invasion” amid a debate over how aggressively Gov. Greg Abbott should confront the federal government over border security.
The Center Square indicated that the following counties are included on the list: Atascosa, Burnet, Chambers, Clay, Collin, Ector, Edwards, Ellis, Fannin, Goliad, Hamilton, Hardin, Hood, Hunt, Jack, Jasper, Johnson, Kinney, Lavaca, Leon, Liberty, Live Oak, Madison, McMullen, Montague, Navarro, Orange, Parker, Presidio, Shackelford, Somervell, Terrell, Throckmorton, Tyler, Van Zandt, Waller, Wharton, Wichita, Wilson, and Wise.
Of those, only Terrell and Presidio are actually on the border.
Many of the resolutions were written to back Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, secure grant funding from the State of Texas, and pressure the federal government to take more aggressive steps to deter illegal immigration. Part of the funding, which was included in an appropriations bill passed in September 2021, is to help counties pay for additional law enforcement to respond to the increased criminal activity that accompanies illegal immigration.
Those who support border security measures focused on deterrence often say “every county is a border county.” Counties have cited fatal drug overdoses and concerns about human trafficking as part of the basis for passing these documents, even if many of the jurisdictions in question are hundreds of miles away from the border.
Gov. Greg Abbott embraced the characterization of illegal immigration as an “invasion,” but his approach to the strategy has been complicated.
In November, Abbott tweeted that he had invoked the “invasion” clauses of the federal and state constitutions and outlined border security measures that he had taken. Many news outlets reported the development as breaking news, but Abbott had instituted most of the measures he listed months earlier.
The U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to protect states against invasions. In addition, Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution authorizes states to protect themselves against the same.
“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay,” the provision reads.
Article IV, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution addresses how the governor is to respond if the state is invaded.
“He shall be Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the State, except when they are called into actual service of the United States. He shall have power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the State, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions,” the section reads.
All of these may help stem the giant Democrat-encouraged flow of illegal aliens into the country, but not as much as the federal government living up to its constitutional obligations to defend the border.
Looting and rioting are both signs of societal breakdown. Recent election cycles have seen the hard-left wing of the Democratic Party encourage (and the rest of party at least tolerate) such behavior, seemingly on the working assumption that doing so helped keep black voters pulling the “D” lever, no matter how destructive it might be for economic opportunity and community cohesion in the long term.
Putting aside morality, it’s easy to see the “nature red in tooth and claw” cost-benefit analysis of looting when no one is getting prosecuted. If everyone is looting and you’re pretty sure you’re not going to be popped for carrying away the big screen TV, hey, free TV!
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown had sharp words for looters Monday who have broken into and stolen items from several stores around the city during the Blizzard of 2022.
Videos of ransacked stores and businesses with people running out with various items have been shared broadly on TikTok, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
The mayor called these people the “lowest of the low.”
“People who are out looting when people are losing their lives in this harsh winter storm it’s just absolutely reprehensible I don’t know how they can live with themselves,” said Mayor Brown during a joint press conference with Erie County and State Officials including Governor Kathy Hochul.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia who also spoke at the press conference said that police are aware of these incidents and working to get a full count of how many there have been.
“We have made a few arrests we have intervened in some of those, we’ve assisted with at least one location that I am aware of in getting a store boarded up so our officers are out there,” said Commissioner Gramaglia.
That store is believed to be Rick’s Sports Apparel near Allen Street and Elmwood Avenue according to a tip shared with 2 On Your Side. The store had its windows broken, got looted, and was boarded up Monday night.
The Commissioner added that officers are starting to get back to their patrol duties which would include monitoring looting and theft. Since Friday the focus has been on the snow emergency and saving lives.
“It’s heartbreaking. When this is all over the community will have nowhere to go to get the things they need,” said Robert Smallwood, an employee at Camellia Meats.
Smallwood had flagged down 2 On Your Side’s Dave McKinley Monday morning and said that the Family Dollar at Genesee Street and Zenner Street was in the middle of being looted. Several videos show people with bags of items who had just exited the store.
Not only do looters seem in no danger of imminent starvation, they also show no fear at the police siren and show no inclination of dropping the looted goods.
Looting generally qualifies as third degree burglary under New York law, which is still a felony that can earn you seven years in jail. So what sort of person would risk that to loot a Family Dollar? You know, where almost everything is a buck? How far down the scale of civilization do you have to slide before grabbing armfuls of cheap goods and running off seems like a viable life strategy?
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has the right attitude toward such criminality, but I note that his party, the Democratic Party, has ruled Buffalo since January 1, 1966, and Democrats have occupied the New York Governor’s mansion since January 1, 2007. And it’s not like Buffalo hasn’t suffered through previous blizzards.
Why is looting a Family Dollar now considered acceptable behavior?
Life expectancy in the United States last year dropped to its lowest point in a quarter century, and it’s not all because of Covid.
Last year saw a 5% decline in life expectancy for Americans, dropping to under 77 years of age.
And while some experts want to try to tie the drop to Covid-19, the numbers reveal that there’s much more at work here than people being killed by the China Virus. There’s another epidemic that is killing Americans at an alarming rate: The Opioid Epidemic.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Covid-19 was the third-leading cause of death for a second consecutive year in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, and a rising number of drug-overdose deaths also dragged down life expectancy. Overdose deaths have risen fivefold over the past two decades.
The death rate for the U.S. population increased by 5%, cutting life expectancy at birth to 76.4 years in 2021 from 77 years in 2020. The CDC in August released preliminary estimates demonstrating a similar decline. Before the pandemic, in 2019, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 78.8 years. The decline in 2020 was the largest since World War II.
While the drop coincides with the Covid pandemic, the increased numbers aren’t caused by the disease alone.
The leading cause of death in the US is still heart disease and cancer.
Then there’s the opioid epidemic.
The country during the pandemic has recorded more than 1.2 million excess deaths, which is a measure of all deaths beyond prior-year averages and can represent both undercounted Covid-19 deaths and collateral damage from other causes, including more overdoses. The CDC put the final count for 2021 overdose deaths at about 106,700, a record that is 16% higher than the prior year. The final count differs from a preliminary count for last year that topped 108,000 because the CDC in its final counts doesn’t include overdose deaths that occurred among non-U. S. residents.
Opioid deaths increased because of lockdowns.
People locked in their homes are more likely to have heart disease.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of people missed cancer screenings and got lesser treatment thanks to lockdowns.
As we covered here at NTB recently, the excess deaths we are seeing aren’t because of Covid, but the lockdowns.
n August of this year, I reported that Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech for infringing patents that are key to Moderna’s mRNA technology platform that was used to develop the covid vaccine.
In response, Pfizer has now countersued Moderna.
The ongoing legal battle now sees Pfizer and its partner BioNTech reject its rival’s claims it copied the shot.
Pfizer has accused Moderna of rewriting history, and dubbed its lawsuit ‘revisionist history’.
Manhattan-based Pfizer requested from a federal court in Boston that Moderna’s lawsuit be dismissed.
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, fired back at Moderna on Monday in a patent lawsuit over their rival Covid-19 vaccines.
They are seeking dismissal of the lawsuit in Boston federal court and an order that Moderna’s patents are invalid and not infringed.
We need effective biotech companies that are not infected by politics or social justice. Unfortunately, those don’t appear to be the companies we have.
Pfizer asserts their vaccine technology was arrived at through independent research.
Everything you need to know about the motives and methods of the 21st-century Left can be learned from studying 20th-century Communism. What Mises said about Marx and Engels, and the ad hominem quality of their rhetoric — slander and insults, rather than actual arguments — was even more true of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, et al. Having once seized power, the Bolsheviks immediately proceeded to suppress all potential rivals. Within a month, they established the Cheka (predecessor of the NKVD and, later, the KGB) and appointed Felix Dzerzhinsky as its leader. Eight months later, the Red Terror began in earnest, and within a matter of weeks, the Bolsheviks had summarily executed more victims than were sentenced to death in the entire preceding century by the Tzarist regime
Snip.
The other day I wrote a piece about how the Left can’t argue anymore. My thesis was pretty simple: because they have owned the cultural means of production so long they have lost the need for or ability to argue things logically.
I still believe that. Having rarely been exposed to a conservative argument that [they] haven’t been able to dismiss merely through repeated ridicule the Left pretty much only engages in ad hominem attacks. Even very smart prominent Lefties . . . seem incapable of doing much more than insulting their opponents any more. It all boils down to Bad Orange Man or MAGA simps. . . .
But I ran into a slightly different perspective on the matter while cruising Twitter, and I think it deserves consideration: sometimes, at least, the person throwing out an absurd take isn’t actually hoping to convince you of anything. They are, rather, trying to discredit the source and do nothing more. The ad hominem attack is the only point — to destroy the credibility of their opponent, without actually convincing you of any particular argument.
Thus the need to label anything that refutes The Narrative as “disinformation.”
State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) filed proposed legislation to prohibit state tax dollars from being used to pay for gender modification procedures.
House Bill 1029 states, “No funds authorized or appropriated by State law shall be expended for any gender reassignment.”
“Just as the Hyde Amendment, which has enjoyed bipartisan support for almost 50 years, bans tax dollars from funding abortions, I’m proud to file a bill which protects Texans from being forced to pay for their neighbor’s sex change,” Harrison said in a statement. “Irrespective of how anyone views these procedures, it should be uncontroversial that tax money should not fund them.”
Harrison added that the bill was filed in response to a statement made by President Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra that public money should be used to provide these procedures to those who want them.
On the same theme: “Kristi Noem’s Health Department Fires Transgender Group Ahead of ‘Gender Summit.'”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, directed her state Department of Health to terminate a contract with The Transformation Project, a transgender activist group that is hosting a “Gender Identity Summit” next month, after The Daily Signal drew the governor’s attention to the summit and the group.
“Gov. Kristi Noem is reviewing all Department of Health contracts and immediately terminated a contract with The Transformation Project,” Ian Fury, Noem’s chief of communications, told The Daily Signal on Friday. “The contract was signed without Gov. Noem’s prior knowledge or approval.”
Fury sent The Daily Signal a copy of the document dissolving the state contract.
“South Dakota does not support this organization’s efforts, and state government should not be participating in them,” Noem told The Daily Signal in a statement provided by Fury. “We should not be dividing our youth with radical ideologies. We should treat every single individual equally as a human being.”
Fury said that The Transformation Project had not complied with its state contract. The organization had failed “to submit required quarterly reports for two consecutive quarters,” among other violations.
All funding to any radical social justice group should be cut, and the people responsible for funding them fired for cause.
The very progressive and liberal nation of Sweden is showing that they still have at least a little bit of common sense in health leadership.
Sweden has decided to cut ties with WPATH, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health because they’re a bunch of activists.
Swedish health authorities have officially broken ranks with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) with the announcement that gender clinics will no longer be attempting to perform experimental sex changes on under-18s but will instead offer “psychological support to help youth live with the healthy body they were born with.”
According to an article published in the Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen, new guidelines will be published before the end of the year advising against puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for under 18s. This is in direct contrast with the WPATH Standards of Care 8 (SOC8) released earlier this year which advises affirmation and medical intervention as the first line of treatment for gender-confused minors.
Sweden is rejecting these recommendations because it’s clearly an extreme measure to do sex change operations on minors.
However, the Biden admin has told us that they’re totally on board with the radical recommendations.
I’m shocked, shocked to discover that two-time loser Democrat Stacey Abrams is bad with money.
Despite surpassing her 2018 fundraising record, Stacey Abrams’s 2022 Georgia gubernatorial campaign fell into deep debt due to reckless expenditures, according to staffers and operatives who worked on the failed campaign.
The campaign still owes more than $1 million to vendors, Abrams campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo confirmed to Axios.
Some of the campaign’s lavish expenditures included the rental of a home near Piedmont Park in Atlanta, which Abrams envisioned as a “hype house” for TikTok videos but which was ultimately underutilized, staffers told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some aides occupied the empty large house as a work space. It can now be rented for $12,500 a month, the publication noted.
The campaign’s youth outreach strategy also proved pricey. Against the better judgement of many staffers, who found the idea irresponsible, Abrams launched a pop-up shop and “swag truck” to hand out merchandise, such as T-shirts and hoodies.
Abrams burned through cash on polls that ended up being inconsequential and consultants whose contributions were unclear, staffers also said.
Many employees in the campaign were given generous salaries compared to other candidates’ teams. For example, the campaign advertised paid canvasser jobs at $15 an hour, higher than the typical rate, according to a Georgia Tech blog discovered by the Journal-Constitution.
Benefitting from glossy, identity-focused coverage, Abrams brought in nearly $98 million as of early November. Yet, her campaign nearly ran out of money in the final stretch. Most of the 180 full-time staffers who worked for her were told they’d receive their last paycheck just a week after Election Day, according to Axios.
YouTube has banned the official Pornhub account, which boasted more than 900,000 followers, after repeated violations.
The platform’s move comes in the wake of other Big Tech companies, like Meta/Instagram and TikTok, removing such accounts. Other corporations, like Visa, Mastercard, Roku, Comcast, Unilever, Kraft-Heinz, and PayPal, have also cut ties with Pornhub.
“Upon review, we terminated the channel Pornhub Official following multiple violations of our Community Guidelines,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said, according to Variety. “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and channels that repeatedly violate or are dedicated to violative content are terminated.”
MindGeek, Pornhub’s parent company, has been hit with multiple lawsuits from survivors of child sex trafficking who claim videos of their abuse were platformed on the pornographic site.
A ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices within institutions of higher education has been filed in the Texas House.
State Representative-elect Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock) filed House Bill (HB) 1006 that requires higher education institutions in Texas to “foster a diversity of viewpoints [and] maintain political, social, and cultural neutrality.”
The teeth of the bill command these universities to “demonstrate a commitment to intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” by eliminating DEI offices or anything like them “beyond what is necessary to uphold the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
It also allows anyone to bring forth civil action against an entity for violation of the prohibition, something Tepper confirmed was modeled after a similar mechanism within the Texas Heartbeat Act.
Additionally, the definition of “expressive activities” protected under state law is expanded to include “published or unpublished faculty research, lectures, writings, and commentary.”
Tepper told The Texan, “These offices have been out of control for a while now and people are getting really frustrated with them.”
Greetings, and welcome to a Christmas Eve Eve LinkSwarm! It got down to 14°F yesterday, and only up to a balmy 30°F or so today. In addition to trying to stay warm, I’ve been working finishing up my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, which went out earlier this evening. (Drop me a line if you want a copy.) Due to that, I think I’m going to break this LinkSwarm into two parts.
House passes pork-filled omnibus spending bill that 18 Republican senators let escape the senate. The amount of bad stuff in here will probably require multiple links tomorrow…
Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?
The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.
Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.
Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.
“Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”
Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”
While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.
Benjamin Netanyahu manages to form new government in Israel. It only took two months since the election!
Mayor Adler’s legacy in Austin:
I just came home today from a 4 day business trip in Austin. Homeless and drug addicts were everywhere. Girls looked like guys, guys looked like girls. In my hotel last night I was woken 3 times from separate bouts gunfire. What happened to this great city?
Two big EU scandals seem to be breaking (one the European media is all over like a winter junket to a fact-finding mission in Greece, the other they’re ignoring the way American media try to ignore any Biden family scandal), and I’m trying to figure out what to make of it all.
One problem with such stories is that I have to refresh my memory on the labyrinth structure of EU power designed to shield the Eurocratic elite from the wrath of mere voters. This is necessary to avoid obvious goofs like mistaking the European Council with the completely different Council of the European Union. The popularly elected European Parliament is the angler-worm appendage the EU wants you to pay attention to rather than the deep state maw of the European Commission.
So: The scandal everyone is paying attention to is Qatargate, where a rich, middling despotic gulf petrostate has evidently been hosing down the faces of eager Euro-types with bundles of unmarked bills to improve their image while hosting the quadrennial outbreak of EuroFlopBall.
In an ongoing political scandal, politicians, political staffers, lobbyists, civil servants and their families are alleged to have been involved in corruption, money laundering and organised crime involving the states of Morocco and of Qatar in exchange for influence at the European Parliament.
Morocco is a red herring herring here, amounting to basically one bribe to one guy.
Qatar denies the allegations. Law enforcement authorities in Belgium, Italy and Greece seized €1.5 million in cash, confiscated computers and mobile phones, and charged four individuals with the alleged offences.
In July 2022, the Central Office for the Repression of Corruption, a unit of the Belgian Federal Police, opened an investigation into an alleged criminal organisation. The investigation was led by the investigating magistrate Michel Claise.
Acting on the investigation, on 9 December 2022, Belgian police executed 20 raids at 19 different addresses across Brussels in connection with the conspiracy and made eight arrests across Belgium and Italy. The homes and offices of the suspects were searched, including offices within the premises of the European Parliament buildings in Brussels. In line with the Belgian Constitution, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, was required to return from her home in Malta to be present for the search at the home of Eva Kaili, who has diplomatic immunity as an MEP and a Vice-President of the European Parliament.
One advantage to this particular scandal is that Eva Kaili is pretty easy on the eyes.
Following the raids at Kaili’s home, her father was later arrested as he tried to flee the Sofitel hotel at Place Jourdan in Brussels after being tipped off about the raids. Investigators found a suitcase with “several hundred thousand euros” on his person as he attempted to flee.
Suitcases full of cash! Your sign of a quality scandal!
Included in the raids were locations linked to Antonio Panzeri, an Italian former MEP. Upon searching his home, police found a large quantity of cash in his “well stocked safe”.
Let’s be fair to Mr. Panzeri: The money in his safe could be from an entirely different bribe.
At the same time investigators raided the offices of the international NGO Fight Impunity, an organisation set up to promote the fight against impunity for serious violations of human rights and crimes against humanity, of which Panzeri is the president.
After the conclusion of the Brussels raids, police had arrested Eva Kaili; Antonio Panzeri; Francesco Giorgi, Kaili’s husband and an advisor of the Italian MEP Andrea Cozzolino; Alexandros Kailis, Kaili’s father and former Greek politician; Luca Visentini, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); Niccolò Figa-Talamanca, Secretary-General of the NGO No Peace Without Justice; and an unnamed assistant of the Italian MEP Alessandra Moretti. Alexandros Kailis was released from custody and Visentini was conditionally released. €600,000 in cash was reportedly found at Panzeri’s home with additional cash being found at Kaili’s father’s home, his hotel room and the home shared by Kaili and Giorgi. In total, the combined amount of cash found in the raids totalled €1.5million. Following Kaili’s arrest she was detained at the Prison de Saint-Gilles [fr] until her transfer after five days to a prison in Haren, Brussels.
Wait, an NGO with “peace” and “justice” in its title is just a conduit for graft and bribes? What are the odds?
No one answers the door or the phone at the offices of the two campaign groups linked to a cash-for-favors corruption scandal at the European Union’s parliament, allegedly involving Qatar. No light is visible inside.
No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), a pro-human rights and democracy organization, and Fight Impunity, which seeks to bring rights abusers to book, share the same address, on prime real estate in the governmental quarter of the Belgian capital.
The heads of the two organizations are among four people charged since Dec. 9 with corruption, participation in a criminal group and money laundering. Prosecutors suspect certain European lawmakers and aides “were paid large sums of money or offered substantial gifts to influence parliament’s decisions.” The groups themselves do not seem to be under suspicion.
Qatar rejects allegations that it’s involved. The Gulf country that’s hosting the soccer World Cup has gone to considerable trouble to boost its public image and defend itself against extensive criticism in the West over its human rights record.
The lawyer for Fight Impunity President Pier Antonio Panzeri is not talking. He declined to comment about his client’s role in an affair that has shaken the European Parliament and halted the assembly’s work on Qatar-related files.
Yeah, Pier Antonio Panzeri and the aforementioned Antonio Panzeri are the same guy. “Pier Antonio Panzeri (born 6 June 1955) is an Italian politician who served as Member of the European Parliament for the North-West with the Democrats of the Left, the [Italian] Democratic Party and Article One, as part of the Socialist Group, from 2004 until 2019.” A Democratic Party socialist taking bribes from foreign despots? Shocked face, what are the odds, etc.
As the Qatargate scandal widens, questions are being asked as to whether its reverberations will reach the Commission, the EU’s executive branch. Recent revelations suggest the EU’s Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell could be implicated.
Since erupting last weekend with police raids on MEPs’ homes and offices in the European parliament, the Qatargate scandal has done nothing but mushroom. What began as a criminal probe into current and former MEPs and parliamentary assistants implicated in a bribery ring aimed at burnishing the public image of the current World Cup host has widened significantly — not only in terms of the number of people involved but also the number of organizations and third countries, which now also include Morocco.
As the scandal grows, both the Parliament and the European Commission are locked in a frantic damage control mission. European Parliament president Roberta Metsola on Thursday (15 December) pledged to unveil a “wide-ranging reform package” in January, which will include measures to bolster whistleblower protections, a ban on all unofficial parliamentary friendship groups (groups of MEPs discussing relations with non-EU countries) and a review of enforcement of code of conduct rules for MEPs.
“Look! We’re doing something! Now please stop paying attention so we can get back to our normal anti-Democratic rent-seeking governance!”
Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, herself no stranger to corruption allegations, both in her native Germany and in Brussels, said the following in a Monday morning press conference:
The allegations against the VP of Parliament [Eva Kaili] are of the most concern, very serious. It’s a question of confidence of our people in our institutions, it needs highest standards. I proposed the creation of an independent ethnics body that covers all EU institutions (in March). For us it is very critical to have not only strong rules, but the same rules covering all the EU institutions, and not to allow for any exemptions.
Von der Leyen added that the Commission is looking at its own transparency register for all logged meetings between staff and Qatari officials. That is not as comforting as it may sound given the flagrant disregard for transparency and accountability her Commission has shown in its acquisition of billions of COVID-19 vaccines.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into the EU’s coronavirus vaccine purchases, an announcement that will refocus attention on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s role in the matter.
The EPPO is an independent EU body responsible for investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, including fraud, money laundering and corruption. In its announcement on Friday, the EPPO didn’t specify who was being investigated, or which of the EU’s vaccine contracts were under scrutiny.
However, two other watchdog agencies have previously drawn attention to one particular deal involving high-level contacts between Pfizer’s leadership and von der Leyen.
“This exceptional confirmation comes after the extremely high public interest. No further details will be made public at this stage,” said the EPPO in its short announcement.
In April 2021, the New York Times first reported on text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s biggest vaccine procurement contract — for up to 1.8 billion doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The deal would be worth up to €35 billion if fully exercised, according to leaked vaccine prices.
Obviously the idea that there was anything wrong with any Flu Maanchu vaccines is something the media will go to great lengths not to cover.
It would be nice to think that both scandals together would cause the EU to seriously address its transparency and democracy deficits, but we all know there’s no chance of that happening…
You may remember from all of nine days ago how lefty Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was removed from power after attempting his own autogolpe. Did that solve the political crisis?
Castillo, elected in 2021, was ousted by parliament last week after he tried to dissolve the legislature and stage a coup. This led to the ascension of his vice president, Dina Boluarte, also a Marxist, as president.
Alarmingly, she has come out against even using rubber bullets to stop the mobs torching buildings and disrupting Peru from Lima to Machu Picchu. According to the New York Times, Boluarte has called on the minister of interior to identify the policemen “who have used these weapons that are harming our sisters and brothers.”
These “brothers and sisters,” members of “indigenous” groups, unions, and other leftist activists, are instigated from outside through social media accounts based in the U.S., Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico and include pro-China, pro-Russia, and pro-Iran activists. Some were also involved with our own Black Lives Matter summer of violence.
Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society, one of the best analysts in the U.S. following this sort of online activity, gave me a rundown of those pushing on social media the disinformation narrative that Castillo was ousted because of racism against his Indian roots. They include former Bolivian President Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner, the recently indicted vice president of Argentina, and Gustavo Petro and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Marxist presidents of Colombia and Mexico, respectively.
Similarly, Douglas Farah, who also conducts investigations on illicit networks, has found that the vast majority of the millions of tweets about the riots that broke out in Chile came from Venezuela and its allies, Cuba and Nicaragua, while most anti-riot tweets were Chilean. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Venezuela’s regime has vowed that it will use its oil money to sow this type of chaos throughout the Americas.
Humire alerted me to influencers such as the pro-Russia activist Daniel Estulin, who actually brags in a video from Mexico that he is helping instigate the riots in Peru. Humire also reminded me that Andahuaylas, rocked by violent protests this week, is within the same region (Apurimac) where Iran has developed an indigenous network.
I would take the Iran charge with a grain of salt, since the Andes are not a region where disgruntled Shia provide an opportunity for Iran to create networks of followers. Plus I think the mullahs have other things on their mind right now.
The basic ingredients for stable prosperity are capitalism, democracy and the rule of law. Because all those limit Marxist Will to Power, leftwing rulers (in South America and elsewhere) seem to constantly be at war with all three.
Democrats being soft on criminals, pedophiles and common sense highlights this week’s LinkSwarm.
Man, there sure seems to be a lot of funny number counting going on in Philadelphia.
Regular readers are well aware that back in July, Zero Hedge first (long before it became a running theme among so-called “macro experts”) pointed out that a gaping 1+ million job differential had opened up between the closely-watched and market-impacting, if easily gamed and manipulated, Establishment Survey and the far more accurate if volatile, Household Survey – the two core components of the monthly non-farm payrolls report.
We first described this divergence in early July, when looking at the June payrolls data, we found that the gap between the Housing and Establishment Surveys had blown out to 1.5 million starting in March when “something snapped.” We described this in “Something Snaps In The US Labor Market: Full, Part-Time Workers Plunge As Multiple Jobholders Soar.”
Since then the difference only got worse, and culminated earlier this month when the gap between the Establishment and Household surveys for the November dataset nearly doubled to a whopping 2.7 million jobs, a bifurcation which we described in “Something Is Rigged: Unexplained, Record 2.7 Million Jobs Gap Emerges In Broken Payrolls Report.”
Snip.
We bring all this up again because late on Dec 13, the Philadelphia Fed published something shocking: as part of the regional Fed’s quarterly reassessment of payrolls in the form of an “early benchmark revision of state payroll employment”, the Philly Fed confirmed what we have been saying since July, namely that US payrolls are overstated by at least 1.1 million, and likely much more!
And the correction came after the midterms! What are the odds?
The Royal Bahamas Police Force took the failed financial tech entrepreneur into custody after the U.S. filed criminal charges against him, according to a press statement. FTX, which Bankman-Fried founded, imploded in November, costing investors millions of dollars in losses. The fallen businessman has been accused of misusing customer funds deposited with FTX to artificially prop up another one of his enterprises: a crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, which he operated simultaneously while seemingly evading financial ethics scrutiny.
Speaking of abusing children: “Former CNN Producer Pleads Guilty In Pedo Scandal. Former CNN producer John Griffin, who worked ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Chris Cuomo, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity as his Vermont ski house. This is a different CNN pedophile than Jake Tapper’s former producer, Rick Saleeby, who resigned after it emerged that he solicited sexually explicit photos of an underage girl.”
The mother of an 11-year-old rape victim is suing a George-Soros backed prosecutor in Virginia who let the boy’s rapist walk free, alleging the prosecutor’s actions violated the minor’s civil rights and made him fear for his physical safety.
Amber Reel in November filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of her son after Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) let the rapist walk. Court filings show Descano was months late in sharing necessary evidence before a September trial, dooming the case and forcing his office to enter into a lesser plea deal with the rapist the same month. Ronnie Reel, who was released on time served, had faced life in prison for forcibly sodomizing the minor. Reel is the victim’s uncle.
This is the second high-profile case in the last month where the Soros prosecutor freed a dangerous offender. In December, Descano struck a plea deal that would clear the record of a man who fired his gun into a crowded Virginia bar. Soros donated more than half a million dollars to Descano’s 2019 campaign.
A grand jury had already indicted Reel in February for sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, and the case was set for trial in September. But Descano’s office didn’t share evidence with the public defender before trial, bungling Reel’s prosecution with its “woefully, woefully missed” deadlines. The case’s presiding judge said Descano’s office did a “disservice to the victim” and was “very concerning to the court.”
Because he dodged a felony sex crime conviction, Reel won’t have to register as a sex offender and won’t be barred from holding jobs in schools or other places that would put him near children. The victim and his mother in their suit say Descano’s “deliberate indifference represents egregious conduct that is shocking to the conscience.”
Speaking of pedophile friendly Democrats: “During the hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, California [Democratic] Rep. Katie Porter asserted that the phrase “groomer” is a “lie” used to maliciously discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and make them appear to be a “threat.” “You know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow and engaged in criminal acts merely because of their gender identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity.” Yes, if your “gender identity” is “I like to have sex with children,” then yes, you’re a pedophile, and if you tell elementary school children what sort of sex you have, then yes, you’re a groomer.
Former state Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) will be the next mayor of Austin about two decades after he left that same office in the early aughts.
He defeated state Rep. Celia Israel (D-Austin) by a slim margin after finishing second in the general election. He’ll serve as mayor for the next two years before having to seek re-election in 2024 due to redistricting.
Watson lost Travis County, the city’s largest portion, by 17 votes while winning Williamson county by 881 and Hays County by 22. During the general and runoff races, he outspent Israel by a wide margin.
The two candidates sparred over housing and homeless policy during the general election and the runoff. About one-third of the voting population turned out to vote in the runoff versus the November 8 general.
Watson will take over for Mayor Steve Adler after his self-described “disruptive” tenure marked by a lingering homelessness problem, public fallout and a declining relationship with the police department, and a cumbersome and increasingly costly light rail transit project.
The United States has always had kind of a friends and family plan that it sells military gear to, but it has always reserved the very top top top stuff for itself and the Brits. Well, in this calendar year we have already seen the first two exceptions to that policy being made. The United States is sending air-launch cruise missiles and nuclear-powered submarines to the Australians. And now we’re giving Tomahawks to the Japanese, giving both of these countries the ability to independently destroy China’s economic links to the wider world without any additional help from the United States. And this sudden proliferation of countries that can now bring China to their knees independently, this is arguably the biggest strategic development of the Year, even more so than the Ukraine war, because it takes what has become the world’s second largest economy and puts it completely at the mercy of the domestic politics of a third party, and now a fourth party.
Oberlin College finally pays their judgment to Gibson’s Bakery. “The $25 million verdict plus interest and attorney’s fees resulted in an almost $32 million judgment, with interest running at about $4000 per day since June 2019. In all, over $36 million was owed.” Cudos to William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection for his thorough, ongoing coverage of this story from beginning to end.
F-35B fighter crashes in the Metroplex. Fortunately the pilot safely ejected, and it appears that the airplane (which was undergoing testing for Lockheed) looks recoverable. To my untrained eye it looks like a stuck throttle.
Howdy! Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! I spent six days up in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, visiting relatives and buying some 180 books, some for myself and some to deal. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!
We keep hearing that it’s impossible rig government unemployment statistics, but something funny is going on.
A superficial take of today’s jobs report would note that both jobs and earnings “blew past expectations, flying in the face of Fed rate hikes”, and while that is accurate at the headline level, it couldn’t be further from the truth if one actually digs a little deeper in today’s jobs numbers.
Recall that back in August, September, and October we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were surging and the number of multiple-jobholders soared.
Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but have become downright grotesque.
Consider the following: the closely followed Establishment survey came in above expectations at 263K, above the 200K expected – a record 7th consecutive beat vs expectations – and down modestly from last month’s upward revised 284K…
… numbers which confirm that at a time when virtually every major tech company is announcing mass layoffs…
… the BLS has a single, laser-focused political agenda – not to spoil the political climate at a time when Democrats just lost control of the House as somehow both construction (+20K) and manufacturing (+14K) added jobs according to the BLS, when even ADP now reports that these two sectors combined shed more than 100,000 workers in November.
Alas, there is only so much the Department of Labor can hide under the rug because when looking at the abovementioned gap between the Household and Establishment surveys which we have been pounding the table on since the summer, it just blew out by a whopping 401K as a result of the 263K increase in the number of nonfarm payrolls (tracked by the Household survey) offset by a perplexing plunge in the number of people actually employed which tumbled by 138K (tracked by Household survey). Furthermore, as shown in the next chart, since March the number of employed workers has declined on 4 of the past 8 months, while the much more gamed nonfarm payrolls (goalseeked by the Establishment survey) have been up every single month.
What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Nov 30, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.7 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS (or is that BLM) political activist.”
A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest corporations and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate staff as part of its effort to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate and House staff received emails from a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies starting in July asking them to confirm their “racial and ethnic identity” as part of an alleged data collection effort. In at least two cases, senior congressional staffers who declined to provide their races were told by the researcher that the organization’s current data indicated they “may identify as white” and asked the staffers to update if the information was incorrect.
Information collected by the group will be used in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a previous report from the group states. That report is made possible in part by millions of dollars in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, among dozens of other large corporations and nonprofits.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is part of a broader trend by left-wing organizations to pressure workplaces and governments to increase affirmative action policies. Often couched in promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” those policies have received criticism for coming at the expense of competence and offering advantages based on race instead of merit.
Rush was charged with a second-degree felony, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon family violence. An emergency protection order was issued against him, and he was soon back on the streets after making a $40,000 bond, KVUE reported.
“For $4,000, you can get out, go home, watch Netflix after trying to murder your ex-girlfriend — are you kidding me?” one of the customers said.
So in addition to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possible attempted murder, our super-genius lawyer also violated section 46.03 of the Texas penal code by carrying a gun into a bar. And he bonded out. For all that Democrats blather about “gun violence,” they don’t seem top treat gun felonies with any seriousness when they actually occur. Thanks, Soros-backed DA Jose Garza!
But it turns out that Rush didn’t just go go home to watch Netflix, as he was found dead on Thursday.
In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.
His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.
In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.
Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November.
Speaking of disinformation, CNN carries out more mass layoffs, including Chris Cillizza. Let’s have a moment of silences for his careerOK that’s enough.
Legal Insurrection conducts a 2024 presidential preference poll. Not surprisingly, DeSantis comes in first and Trump second. Nikki Haley third over Ted Cruz is a mild surprise. Greg Abbott ranked dead last, tied with Liz Chaney, is a much bigger one.
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach controversial Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-PA).
Five lawmakers, including three Republicans and two Democrats with constituencies in Philadelphia, formed a committee to investigate Krasner earlier this year. Members of the lower chamber voted by a margin of 107 to 85 in favor of impeaching Krasner, enabling the Pennsylvania Senate to remove the official with a two-thirds majority.
“Texas Democrats Blame Lackluster Midterm on 2021 Election Reform, Redistricting, and Poor Border Messaging.” Note that the word “policies” appears nowhere in the article…
The partisan index for Texas counties. Republican counties tended to get slightly more Republican while Democratic counties got slightly less Democratic.
A study conducted by criminologist Michael Smith of the University of Texas at San Antonio shows that 56 percent of individuals charged with violent crimes or weapons law violations in Dallas are released on bail or their own recognizance. That figure includes about 75 percent of offenders charged with weapons law violations, about two-thirds of those arrested for aggravated assault, and 34 percent of those arrested for murder.
Smith examined 464 arrests from 2021 and followed the cases through May 15 of this year. The dataset included all (109) arrests for murder, 25 percent (73) of arrests for robbery, 25 percent (154) of arrests for aggravated assault involving a family member, 10 percent (67) of arrests for aggravated assault not involving a family member, and 10 percent (61) of arrests for weapons law violations.
Almost a quarter of those released were arrested again within the course of the study. The average length of time between release and the second arrest was 148 days.
Disney shares are down 40 per cent this year, and last week’s quarterly report makes for grim reading. Disney’s expenses and operating losses are skyrocketing. Even the hugely popular Disney+, which continues to gain in subscribers, made an operating loss of $1.47 billion – more than double its loss last year. An internal memo last week announced job cuts and a hiring freeze.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Disney’s troubles arrive in a year when the company has been distracted by politics. Indeed, it seems to have gone into overdrive to promote woke causes, both on screen and off.
Most infamously, in March, Disney waded into a bruising political battle with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, over his Parental Rights in Education Act. The law, now enacted, bans ‘classroom instruction’ on issues of ‘sexual orientation or gender identity’ for Florida schoolkids under the age of 10. Although the law has the overwhelming support of parents, from across the political spectrum, it sparked fury in media circles. Critics were quick to dub it the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, arguing that it ‘marginalises LGBTQ+ people’.
Disney was only too happy to join in the chorus of denunciation. The act ‘should never have passed’, said Disney in a statement. ‘Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.’ Disney also pledged to donate $5million to organisations opposed to the law. But DeSantis hit back. He revoked a special tax status that Disney’s Florida theme parks had enjoyed since 1967.
Disney’s growing reputation for championing woke causes is costing it more than just its tax exemptions. It is now clearly damaging its relationship with audiences. As recently as March 2021, Disney’s public-approval rating was 77 per cent. But a September poll finds approval for Disney has now fallen to only 51 per cent among all Americans. And it has fallen into negative territory among Republicans. As pollster Chris Wilson notes: ‘It is highly unusual for a family entertainment company to find itself outside the good graces of so many Americans.’
Some leftists have asserted, despite all evidence, that crime rates in blue states are no higher than in red states. One for this illusion is that Soros-backed DAs game the statistics. Another is that in many deep blue cities, residents simply no longer report crime, because they know police won’t investigate the case or pursue suspects, and that even if suspects are apprehended, those same Soros-backed DAs will simply let them go without bail. Another is that, even if citizens try to make a complaint, the police will simply refuse to take it, believing it to be a waste of their time.
Here New York City-to-Austin transplant Louis Rossmann talks about the decay of the Big Apple from it’s Rudy Giuliani broken windows policing heyday to its current state of disorder, and why you can’t trust the statistics.
