There’s been spiraling violence since Sunday across multiple West Bank towns and villages. Israeli settlers went on a rampage in the Nablus area – burning cars, businesses and attacking random Palestinians – after a Sunday night shooting wherein a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis in the Huwara area.

Palestinian officials have condemned what they called a “pogrom” which saw some 400 Palestinians injured. This resulted in more shootings by Palestinian gunmen on Monday, including of a motorist identified by US officials as an American.

According to Al Jazeera, “Palestinian media reported stabbings and attacks with metal rods and rocks. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said one person was in hospital after being beaten in the head with a rock, causing fractures to the skull. Another person suffered a beating with a metal rod to the face.”

There’s since been a series of tit-for-tat revenge attacks from either side, with the latest resulting in the death of an American citizen in his 20s.

He was shot Monday near the city of Jericho by Palestinian gunmen, the US State Department confirmed:

According to Reuters, the killing was part of several drive-by shootings conducted by Palestinians along a highway amid escalating violence this week.

Two Israeli settlers were shot dead on Sunday, reportedly by a Palestinian gunman, prompting other settlers to storm through part of the West Bank.

The State Department later condemned the killings and “the wide-scale, indiscriminate violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians.”

US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides issued a statement saying, “Sadly, I can confirm that a U.S. citizen was killed in one of the terror attacks in the West Bank tonight. I pray for his family.”

Israeli reports describe that gunmen drove up beside the man’s car and shot at him while also opening fire on other cars, and subsequently the gunmen abandoned their car, setting it on fire. No others in nearby vehicles were injured. 

Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times,

A 73-year-old Arizona man will go on trial for the alleged second-degree murder of an illegal immigrant on his ranch property in January.

Justice of the Peace Emilio Velasquez determined at an evidentiary hearing in Nogales Justice Court on Feb. 24 that there was probable cause against George Alan Kelly to proceed to a trial in Superior Court.

Police initially charged Kelly with first-degree murder in the Jan. 30 shooting death of 43-year-old Mexican national Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, based mainly on inconsistent statements that Kelly made during an interview. 

The incident allegedly occurred on Kelly’s ranch located near Nogales, a southern border city of 20,837 in Arizona’s Santa Cruz County.

George Alan Kelly enters court for his preliminary hearing in Nogales Justice Court in Nogales, Ariz., on Feb. 22, 2023. (Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool)

During the Feb. 24 court hearing, the prosecution announced that Kelly would face a reduced charge of second-degree murder, which doesn’t require proof that the alleged crime was premeditated. 

Prosecutors didn’t elaborate on the downgraded felony charge. Kelly faces two additional charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Kelly’s attorney, Brenna Larkin, asked the judge to grant a continuance since the state’s case had “changed drastically” with new disclosures, requiring time for her to prepare a response. 

“In my experience, it is routine to grant continuances,” Larkin said. “Mr. Kelly should not be treated any differently.”

“Frankly, I am amazed at the state’s opposition [to a request for a continuance],” she said.

The judge denied the defense’s motion and the hearing moved forward to determine whether there was sufficient evidence that Kelly committed second-degree murder.

Kelly, wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and a vest, was present in the courtroom at the Feb. 24 hearing. He remains free after posting a $1 million surety bond on his property.

Murder or Self-Defense?

The defense says that Kelly and his wife were having lunch in their kitchen when they heard a single gunshot at about 2 p.m. on Jan. 30. 

In court documents, Kelly told police that he went out onto his porch and saw a horse running in his direction and then a group of 10 to 15 men in camouflage clothing, wearing backpacks, and armed with AK-47 assault rifles. 

Kelly claimed he fired multiple warning shots from his AK-47 over the heads of the men when they pointed their weapons at him. The men then scattered and ran off his property.

During the alleged confrontation, Kelly called a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol liaison on his cell phone to report the incident. 

An initial search of his property by Border Patrol agents and sheriff’s deputies failed to locate any of the men or the deceased.

Later in the day, Kelly texted the Border Patrol liaison and left a voice message saying the matter was “worse than he could imagine” and that he “might have shot at something.”

Kelly reportedly told police he discovered the body of a man after he went to check on his horses around 5 p.m. that day and used a flashlight to mark the location of the body. 

A second search of the property found Cuen-Butimea lying face down with a single gunshot wound in his back.

Wanda Kelly (C), wife of George Alan Kelly, accused of first-degree murder in the shooting death of an illegal immigrant on Jan. 30, leaves the Nogales Justice Center in Nogales, Ariz., following a hearing on Feb. 22, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Police were issued a warrant to search Kelly’s house; during a second search, they discovered Kelly’s AK-47, ammunition, and at least eight shell casings on and around his porch. 

During the defense cross-examination of a Santa Cruz County detective, Larkin alluded to a federal agent who described the location near Kelly’s ranch as a “high crime area” used for drug trafficking and criminals who steal drugs from the cartels.

The detective testified that during an interview, he told Kelly it was time to “come forward with the truth” and that the charge of first-degree murder rested largely on Kelly making “inconsistent statements.”

“I arrested him based on the totality of the circumstances,” the detective testified.

Prosecutors called a man identified only by the initials D.R.R., who testified that he was with Cuen-Butimea on Jan. 30 when Kelly allegedly started shooting at the group. 

The witness, wearing a blue hoodie and medical mask to conceal his identity, testified using a Spanish interpreter.

“[The group was] walking when this gentleman shot at us,” the witness testified. “I saw Gabriel hold his chest.”

He added that then, Cuen-Butimea rolled his eyes and fell to the ground sideways.

“I ran. I couldn’t help him.”

The witness testified that the gunshots, about 15 in total, sounded like rounds from an AK-47 rifle. He said he thought “the government” had shot at him as the group fled back across the border fence and into Mexico.

Witness Testimony ‘Not Credible’

Before the judge’s ruling on probable cause, Larkin said there was “no reason” to believe the “absolutely incredible” testimony of the witness and said that police found no shell casings in the quantity matching the witness description.

“It’s not conceivable that Mr. Kelly aimed from his porch, somehow saw this person, and made this long, difficult shot,” she said.

“Obviously, there is a dead body here,” she added.

“There needs to be probable cause that this crime took place [and that] this specific person committed this crime.”

Larkin asked the judge to “do the right thing” and find no probable cause in the case.

In the meantime, a fundraising campaign on GiveSendGo had raised $344,460 toward Kelly’s legal defense.

Shannon Pritchard, who created the campaign, wrote that the original goal was $250,000, calling the amount raised “astounding, miraculous, a blessing to the Kelly family beyond belief.”

“It is a tragedy that a simple farmer, who should be protected by the government has been abandoned and had to defend himself. That is bad enough, but the government that caused this, now wishes to persecute him,” Pritchard wrote. 

A Change.org petition that urges the charges against Kelly be dropped collected 11,526 signatures, toward a goal of 15,000.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the border crisis in Yuma, Arizona, on Feb. 23, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said he thought the $1 million bond set for Kelly was “a little excessive” based on what he has seen.

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels talks about the fentanyl crisis at the southern border in Arizona on Feb. 16, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

“Just from what I’ve seen, it seemed a little excessive for a guy who doesn’t have a criminal history and claiming self-defense and is claiming he didn’t even shoot him.”

Lamb told The Epoch Times that a first-degree murder charge seemed unusual for the case, given the evidence presented.

“I heard the term premeditated. Premeditated first-degree is pretty hard to prove. From what I’ve heard, it’s going to be tough. But I don’t know the case.”

Santa Cruz County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Geraldo Castillo told The Epoch Times that the department has “not investigated a crime of this magnitude [previously] involving a migrant and a rancher.”

“The investigation continues. There’s a lot still ongoing. I will not be able to comment at this time,” Castillo said.

While prosecutors argued that Kelly shot Cuen-Butimea without provocation, Larkin said the case has been “highly political” from the start.

“This essentially lit a match over an incredibly intense political powder keg and, predictably, there was an explosion,” Larkin said at a court hearing on Feb. 22.

Kelly declined to comment to The Epoch Times at the probable cause hearing on Feb. 24.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,

A radical social justice Marxist and former member of the Black Panthers discovered that one of her ancestors arrived in the New World from England on the 1620 Mayflower expedition.

On Tuesday’s PBS episode of “Finding your Roots,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr. interviewed Angela Davis, whom he said came to the show to have the mystery of her lineage solved.

In the show’s final moments, Gates revealed that the investigation into her ancestry dated back to her tenth great-grandfather, a white man named William Brewster, who was born in England in 1570 and traveled to America on the Mayflower.

A visibly stunned Davis said, “No, I can’t believe this. My ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now.”

Marxist Angela Davis, Who Teaches That America Was Built By Racist Colonizers, Finds Out Her Ancestors Was On The Mayflower pic.twitter.com/j7XBpthT69

— 757 Patriot (@757patriot) February 26, 2023

Davis emerged in California during the late 1960s as a prominent civil rights figure and a member of the Communist Party.

She’s continued to support radical, far-left politics, and is currently a professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

Amid her social justice activism, Davis was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for her alleged involvement in the armed seizure of a Marin County Courthouse in California that left four people dead, including a judge.

It had been shown that Davis purchased the guns used in the attack.

Davis went into hiding but was eventually arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges.

She was imprisoned for 16 months before being released on bail and later acquitted by an all-white jury in 1972.

Born in Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Alabama, Davis told Gates she had always assumed that her ancestors were slaves.

While that’s partially true on her grandmother’s side, she also descends from slave owners, a piece of information that runs contrary to the message of the current social justice movement for which Davis advocates.

Critical Race Theory

Davis has been a proponent of Critical Race Theory (CRT), a variation of a concept put forth by German philosopher Karl Marx called “Critical Theory,” which divides people between oppressors and the oppressed.

The CRT variation of the theory focuses on the concept of “white supremacy” in that it labels white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed while blaming white people of today for slavery that took place in the past.

…

Descended From a Patriot Slave Owner

According to the lineage, Davis’s mother was named Salley Belle, and Belle’s father was a white Alabama attorney and lawmaker named John Austin Darden.

This was another surprise to Davis.

When Gates pointed out that John Austin Darden was a prominent member of the community, Davis asked, “Well, was he a member of the Klu Klux Klan or the White Citizen’s Council? That’s something I would also want to know because in those days, if one wanted to achieve that power one had to thoroughly embrace white supremacy.”

The information of her lineage only drifted further from the social justice dogma.

Her fourth great-grandfather, Stephen Darden, was born in colonial Virginia in 1750, and later served in the Revolutionary War.

After the Revolutionary War, Darden moved from Virginia to Georgia, where he owned a farm and six slaves.

Angela’s grandmother, Mollie Spencer, lived next door to a white man named Murphy Jones, whom the genetic profile showed to be Davis’ grandfather.

Jones and Spencer had four children together. Murphy later sold Spencer 22 acres of land for $200, PBS reported.

On processing the information about her ancestry, Davis told Gates, “I always imagined my ancestors as the people who were enslaved. My mind and my heart are swirling with all of these contradictory emotions.”

Read more here…

That’s a nice little EV industry you got over there in the US, it’s be a shame if suddenly it found itself without the most important commodity.

That’s one way to interpret what just happened in China; another – a less cynical – is the way Bloomberg described it, namely that China’s lithium industry itself is reeling as its top production hub –  responsible for around a 10th of the world’s supply –  faces sweeping closures amid a government probe of environmental infringements.

The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, also known as the country’s “Lithium capital” follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material — and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they’re grappling with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent from Beijing.

According to Yicai newspaper, ore-processing operations in Yichun have been ordered to stop as investigators probe alleged violations at lithium mines. That, Bloomberg notes, threatens somewhere between 8% and 13% of global supply, according to various analyst estimates, although it’s unclear for how long the immediate shutdowns will last.

The sudden probe injects a big dose of uncertainty into a lithium market that has seen  prices drop, bringing some relief to EV manufacturers, as more global output emerges. Jiangxi province was expected to be a big source of extra supply, from a lithium-bearing mineral known as lepidolite.

“This supervision may mean that the inspection and control over lepidolite mining in China will be more stringent in the future,” said Susan Zou, analyst at Rystad Energy. Companies with operations in Yichun include major battery manufacturers Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and Gotion High-Tech Co., whose shares both fell more than 1% on Monday.

Due to the ongoing probe, all lepidolite mining in Yichun aside from those by a state-owned company have been suspended, but refineries are still operational, Daiwa analysts Dennis Ip and Leo Ho said.

Global lithium prices soared to a record high last year as demand from China’s booming electric-vehicle industry outstripped production. And, as so often happens in commodities, where the cure to high prices is more supply, leading to lower prices, this high-profit, high-demand environment has encouraged miners to skirt regulations.

Some companies had already been targeted for infringements, including incidents of pollution, over the past year. This is a much wider crackdown, and involves officials from central government departments including the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Yucai added that Beijing will mainly look at violations at lithium mines and seek to guide the “healthy development” of the industry; they will largely target those mining without permits or with expired licenses.

Curiously, a recent Goldman report found that the Chinese car industry’s demand for lithium has fallen by more than half in recent months, a dramatic reversal that will drive a further slump in the market. Meanwhile, Chinese prices have dropped more than 30% from last year’s peak.

According to calculations form Citic Securities analyst Bai Junfei, a month-long mining halt in Yichun would reduce lithium output by an amount equivalent to around 13% of the world’s total. Rystad Energy, a consultancy, estimated the amount at 8%.

“At present, the market speculation is that the probe may stop after the two sessions in China next month,” Rystad’s Zou said, referring to the annual parliamentary meetings due early March.

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Amid objections from Michigan authorities who said they weren’t aware that hazardous materials were headed into their state, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ordered a temporary pause on shipments of contaminated waste from the site of Norfolk Southern Railway’s Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

“Everyone wants this contamination gone from the community,” EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore said. “They don’t want the worry, and they don’t want the smell, and we owe it to the people of East Palestine to move it out of the community as quickly as possible.”

Shore vowed that the removal process will resume “very soon.”

On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying 151 cars derailed in East Palestine, a village of 4

The National Transportation Safety Board reported that the train had 20 cars with hazardous materials, 11 of which derailed.

To avoid an uncontrolled explosion that officials claimed would send shrapnel into the air, toxic vinyl chloride was intentionally released and burned from five cars on Feb. 6, sending up a massive cloud of black smoke that could be seen for miles around and was likened to a mushroom cloud caused by a nuclear weapon.

The burn triggered questions about the health effects on the residents of East Palestine.

EPA Takes Over Waste Disposal

Norfolk Southern had been responsible for waste disposal until Feb. 24, Shore said. The railroad provided Ohio environmental officials with a list of disposal sites.

Shore said disposal plans, including locations and transportation routes for contaminated waste, will be subject to EPA review and approval.

“EPA will ensure that all waste is disposed of in a safe and lawful manner at EPA-certified facilities to prevent further release of hazardous substances and impacts to communities,” she said.

On Feb. 21, the EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to pay for cleanup costs in East Palestine.

“Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said. “I know this order cannot undo the nightmare that families in this town have been living with, but it will begin to deliver much-needed justice for the pain that Norfolk Southern has caused.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a Feb. 23 statement, “[Under EPA guidance,] Norfolk Southern brought in large dump trucks to move contaminated soil to U.S. Ecology Wayne Disposal, a licensed hazardous waste disposal facility in Michigan. This will be a continuous effort to properly manage and safely dispose of the waste.

“So far, 4,832 cubic yards of soil have been excavated from the ground and more may be removed as cleanup proceeds. When the process begins to dig up the tracks and remove the soil underneath, that soil will be hauled away immediately and taken to a proper disposal facility.”

More than 1.7 million gallons of contaminated liquid have been removed from the derailment site, according to DeWine’s office. Most of the 1.1 million gallons hauled off-site were sent to a Texas-based hazardous waste disposal facility, which has stated that it will no longer accept shipments.

Read more here…

Elon Musk has regained his spot as the world’s richest man, unseating LVMH’s Bernard Arnault who briefly assumed the position this year after Tesla’s stock had taken a beating along with Musk’s net worth.

Bezos, Gates, and Buffett aren’t even close…

Thanks to a 5.5% surge in TSLA stock today, 51-year-old Musk’s net worth jumped to $187.1billion…

…while 75-year-old Arnault has seen his net worth drift slightly lower in the last week or so (after LVMH’s strong gains early on), back to only $185.3…

Tesla has recovered to a $650bn market cap (up $315 billion in market cap year-to-date)…

Tesla’s gains this year (+92% YTD) have far outpaced the rally in the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index, which is up about 10% in 2023, and crushed LVMH’s return year-to-date (+14% YTD)…

Musk’s fortune peaked at $340 billion on Nov. 4, 2021… so he is probably still feeling somewhat poorer.

China has delivered a blistering response to the US pressure campaign regarding Beijing’s closer ties with Moscow. In Monday remarks Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, told a press briefing that China is prepared to retaliate if “illegal” sanctions on Chinese companies involved with Russia are not revoked.

She also rejected accusations from Washington that China is mulling sending weapons to Russia, calling the reports part of US “disinformation”. Instead, she said “The U.S., however, has been fanning the flame and fueling the fight with more weaponry.”

“This is out-and-out hegemonism and double standard, and absolute hypocrisy,” Mao said. “The Chinese side will continue to do what is necessary to firmly safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies. We will take resolute countermeasures in response to the U.S. sanctions.”

She reiterated China’s position as one which seeks a peaceful solution through negotiations when it comes to the Ukraine conflict. “On the Ukraine issue, China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis,” she said.

And from there she once again put the blame for escalation back on Washington: 

“In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués,” Mao noted. “What exactly is the US up to? The world deserves to know the answer.”

She said that the US is ultimately busy “spreading disinformation that China would supply weapons to Russia and sanctioning Chinese companies under that pretext.”

One of the Chinese companies in question, Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute, previously came under sanctions for allegedly supplying the Russian mercenary firm Wagner Group  with satellite imagery of Ukraine.

The real concern is that China is going to sit back and watch the West and Russia drain each other’s combat power.
They think this will leave them as top dog, and make their jump-off against Taiwan in 2025-2026 that much easier.

— QuintusCurtius (@QuintusCurtius) February 27, 2023

US under secretary of State for political affairs Victoria Nuland said last week that sanctions were against Chinese companies that US had observed “sneaking up to the edge and trying to provide” weapons to Russia.

With only three weeks until the spring season, the National Weather Service forecasts a winter storm could blanket Manhattan’s Central Park with as much as 5 inches. A nearly yearlong “snow drought” would end for the metro area if frozen precipitation accumulates on Tuesday morning. 

NWS has posted winter storm advisories for New York City and Long Island. Forecasts show between 3-5 inches of snow is expected. There could be times snow transitions to sleet and rain. Warnings are posted for interior areas that could see 5-8 inches. 

NWS expects the snow to begin around Monday evening and last through Tuesday morning.

Here are the latest snowfall accumulation forecasts. 

For NYC residents, this wintery event will be “their first snowstorm of the year at this point,” David Roth, a senior branch forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center, told Bloomberg. The Northeast has recorded unseasonably warm temperatures so far this season. 

Winter may finally arrive in #NYC today. ❄️@HeatherWxTv says 3 to 6 inches of snow is expected today. The snow will start around 6 p.m. and continue through Tuesday afternoon. ☃️ pic.twitter.com/vjv28gckCv

— NY1 Weather (@NY1weather) February 27, 2023

A lot more snow is expected to fall across the interior Northeast. 

Say it ain’t snow! ❄️ A developing coastal low is forecast to bring accumulating snow to the Northeast tonight into tomorrow, with the heaviest amounts confined to the interior. Some locations (NYC 😉) that have yet to record 1″ of snow this winter may do so with this storm. pic.twitter.com/aXCh9sTkmS

— NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) February 27, 2023

Mean temperatures for Manhattan are already turning higher on a 30-year seasonal average. An indication spring is around the corner.

This could be the last time to sled or cross-country ski this winter season in Central Park. 

Via SchiffGold.com,

The markets basically shrugged off the hotter-than-expected inflation data for January. Most people remain convinced that the Fed can easily get price inflation back to 2% without wrecking the economy. But in his podcast, Peter explains that stuffing that inflation genie back into the bottle is a lot harder than most people seem to think.

Both the CPI and the PPI came in hotter than expected in January.

“In my opinion, it indicated a trough in so-called disinflation,” Peter said.

Jerome Powell hung his hat on declining price inflation numbers. It was the thing he could point to in order to claim he was winning the inflation fight. Even though the CPI was still well above the 2% target, it was coming down. So, it appeared that the Fed strategy was working, and we were well on a path to victory. At that point, the central bank would be free to start lowering interest rates.

Peter was calling this “wishful thinking” all along.

I was pointing out that it was not going to be nearly as easy to get that inflation genie back in the bottle as the markets expected. The CPI and PPI data should have thrown cold water on that narrative.”

But apparently, it didn’t, because the market basically shrugged the hotter-than-expected CPI and PPI data off. In fact, the NASDAQ finished last week with gains. And it is the more speculative, risky stocks that are doing well — not what you would expect if the markets were worried about more Federal Reserve monetary tightening.

The mainstream seems totally oblivious to the extreme difficulty of stuffing that inflation genie back into the bottle and getting back to the mythical 2% target. As Peter explained, history bears this out.

If you look back in time going back to the 1970s — that’s when inflation really got out of hand —  but going back to the year 1970, there have only been 11 years since then when inflation has been 2% or lower.”

If you’re going to take the Fed at its word that it wants inflation to be 2%, then it should be at that target or slightly under in order to claim success.

Not that 2% was its official target back in the 70s or 80s, but just to highlight how difficult it is to have a 2% inflation rate in this modern fiat economy, we’ve only had 2% or less 11 times since 1970. And eight of those 11 years happened after the 2008 financial crisis. In other words, before the 2008 financial crisis, when we kind of had a normal economy, we only had three years out of 38 where we had 2% or lower inflation. That’s 8% of the time.”

In the decade after the 2008 financial crisis, we had nearly years of 0% interest rates and multiple rounds of quantitative easing. That was far from normal.

If you go back to a normal period of time, and you could argue today’s time period is more normal in that respect based on where interest rates are, why should it be any easier for the Fed to get 2% inflation now than it was before the 2008 financial crisis? In fact, it should be harder for the Fed to achieve that goal because we have so much more debt now than we had back then. Interest rates have been so low for so long. The Fed has created so much money — like half the money in circulation came into circulation just in the last couple of years. So, that really makes the Fed’s job of bringing inflation down to 2% basically impossible.”

In fact, we haven’t even reached a new equilibrium to reflect all of the new money that is now in circulation.

You have to have a balance between supply and demand — supply being the amount of goods that are produced and demand meaning all of the money that’s available to procure those goods. People now have a lot more money. Why? Because the Fed created a lot more money and put it into circulation. So, now there is more money chasing a limited supply of goods. We need a new equilibrium. The demand curve has shifted as a result of an increase in the money supply. So, now we need to find a higher equilibrium price to balance supply and demand. And we’re not even there yet. So, to think that the Fed could easily return us to a 2% inflation — a goal that was very rarely achieved prior to the 2008 financial crisis…?”

Peter conceded that it took longer than he expected for all of the inflation the Federal Reserve created after the financial crisis to manifest in higher prices. But we’re certainly seeing it today. Meanwhile, the Fed has backed itself into a corner. For years after the 2008 financial crisis, it lamented inflation below 2% and tried to get it back to that level. In fact, central bankers even said overshooting wouldn’t be a problem because they know how to fight inflation.

That’s what made me say on my podcast on many occasions, ‘Be careful what you wish for if you’re a central banker wishing for inflation.’ … I pointed out just how impossible it would be to put the inflation genie back in the bottle. In fact, I pointed out that that expression came into being for a reason. If you have an expression like that, it was developed specifically because of the experiences the people had. So, the reason you’re not supposed to let the inflation genie out of the bottle is because of how hard it is to get it back in. But for some reason, this new generation of central bankers basically felt that, no, that expression doesn’t mean anything at all.”

We are now reliving the experience that is responsible for the adoption of the adage “don’t let the inflation genie out of the bottle.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill that takes control of a special tax district surrounding Walt Disney World that, as Reuters reports, for half a century allowed Walt Disney Co. to operate with an almost unprecedentedly high degree of autonomy.

The legislation, titled HB 9-B, ends Disney’s self-governing status, establishes a new state-controlled district and imposes a five-member state control board, which is appointed by the governor.

The board will also be confirmed by the state Senate.

“Today is the day the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said.

pic.twitter.com/HgAzYN0UYi

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 27, 2023

The Republican governor said during the announcement this morning that:

“Allowing a corporation to control its own government is bad policy, especially when the corporation makes decisions that impact an entire region.”

Florida Ends the Corporate Kingdom https://t.co/N7lJA1BSXb

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 27, 2023

The law also ends Disney’s exemption from state regulatory reviews and codes and it ensures “that Disney will pay its fair share of taxes,” DeSantis’ office said.

DeSantis’ actions come after Disney’s advocacy against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill (the so-called “Don’t say gay bill”).

As The Epoch Times’ Dan Berger reports, DeSantis and other speakers who joined him at the podium reviewed a wide range of issues tied into the tussle with the big entertainment company.

Nick Catarano, a long-time and second-generation Disney employee—his uncle went to work there when the park opened in the 1970s—outlined the company’s firing and harassment of employees like himself who didn’t want to get COVID shots or wear masks. He also spoke of his dismay at the shift in Disney’s once-family-friendly content, one that made him proud, to one many families object to.

“Disney has since doubled down and embraced all things woke increasingly making things like sex, gender, race and worse things the core mission of its storytelling. You know, we’ve gone from ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White’ and ‘Pocahontas’ and all these great stories with morals and great characters, and have brought us stuff like ‘Little Demon’ who was the spawn, the child of Satan, as the lead character.”

“We have recently seen the cartoon ‘Proud Family’ on Disney Plus. And that really doesn’t tell the whole truth of what happened in our country. They tried to build a narrative that everything in this country is built on the back of slaves and reparations. And what they’re doing is they’re taking vulnerable children, and they’re indoctrinating them into becoming activists and hating each other.”

Disney has said it won’t resist the new arrangement and will now work with the state, Disney World CEO Jeff Vahle said in a statement.