Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

As I read about the life and death of billionaire Charles Feeney, I could not help but think what America’s welfare-state way of life has done to destroy many people’s faith in freedom. 

According to an article in the New York Times, Feeney was “a pioneer of duty-free shops and and investor in technology start-ups.” He became a billionaire. And then he donated all of his $8 billion fortune to charity. He left himself around $2 million.

America’s welfare state way of life is based on the notion that the federal government is needed to force people to be good and caring to others. 

That’s the idea, for example, behind Social Security.

If there was no Social Security, it is said, there would be seniors dying in the streets.

That’s because, they say, people, including children and grandchildren, cannot be trusted with the freedom to decide whether to honor their mother and father or grandparents on a voluntary basis. They must be forced to do so through the coercive apparatus of the Internal Revenue Service and the faceless bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration.

It’s the same, for example, with public schooling.

If the state didn’t force parents to herd their children into these governmental institutions, the poor would have no way to have their children educated.

The notion that there would be people with money to help out others in need is considered ludicrous. 

And then along come people like Charles Feeney, who are more than willing to help out others with money they have accumulated.

Of course, there are countless instances of people helping others on a purely voluntary basis, but welfare-statists give them short shrift. 

Consider, for examples, local drives to raise money for college scholarships for poorer students. Or food drives that are sometimes conducted at churches in America. People are more than willing to contribute to such drives. 

In fact, guess who funds the churches themselves. No, not the government. The members of the church do that, on a purely voluntary basis, simply because they consider it an important thing that they wish to do.

Imagine if the government had been funding churches for the past 225 years. Imagine if a libertarian came along and suggested that such funding be immediately terminated. Imagine the response: “If we did that, the churches would cease to exist. Do you libertarians honestly believe that people would fund churches all on their own? And where would the poor go to church? Only the rich would have churches.”

Some would say that people don’t have enough money to donate to worthy causes. There is a good reason for that — the federal government’s income tax, which deprives people of an enormously large amount of money that could be saved, donated, invested, or spent. The more people are able to earn and keep, the more they are able to help out others. A society in which people are on the verge of starvation is a society where there is not going to be a large amount of donations to help out others. 

Finally, there is something important to note about America’s welfare-state way of life: It does not reflect care and compassion, as welfare-warfare state proponents claim. That’s because care and compassion do not come from the coercive apparatus of the IRS and the faceless bureaucracy of the welfare state. They come only from the willing heart of the individual, who demonstrates such care and compassion by voluntarily helping others.

What we need in America is a revival of faith in freedom, ourselves, others, and God. When that revival comes, the welfare-state way of life will be finished. 

US Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was hit with a new charge Thursday that he conspired to act as an agent of the Egyptian government while he was head of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

In a superseding indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, Menendez was accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires anyone acting as “an agent of a foreign principal” to register with the US government. Menendez was prohibited from doing so either way as a member of Congress.

The new charge comes weeks after Menendez and his wife Nadine were indicted for allegedly accepting bribes, as well as having “promised to take and took a series of acts on behalf of Egypt, including on behalf of Egyptian military and intelligence officials.”

According to the indictment, Menendez and his wife, along with business associate Wael Hana, met with an Egyptian intelligence official in Menendez’s Senate office in Washington DC, during which they discussed a US citizen who was injured in a 2015 airstrike by the Egyptian military – an incident which some members of Congress cited as a reason to withhold certain military aid to Egypt.

Shortly after the meeting, the Egyptian official texted Hana that if Menendez took care of the matter, “he will sit very comfortably.”

Hana texted back, “Orders, consider it done.”

In an email, Hana’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said the “new allegation that Wael Hana was part of a plot concocted over dinner to enlist Senator Menendez as an agent of the Egyptian Government is as absurd as it is false.”

“As with the other charges in this indictment, Mr. Hana will vigorously defend against this new and baseless allegation,” he wrote.

Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty to the charges lodged against them last month. Hana pleaded not guilty last month to charges including conspiracy to commit bribery.

After Hana’s company was granted a lucrative monopoly by the Egyptian government to certify that all meat imported into that country met religious requirements, prosecutors said, Menendez urged U.S. agriculture officials to stop questioning the deal. –AP

Menendez was also accused of accepting “cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value” as part of a “corrupt relationship” with businessman Fred Daibes.

Daibes, a developer and former bank chairman, allegedly gave Menendez gold bars valued at approximately $400,000, in exchange for assistance in a case in which he faced federal bank charges.

Instead of facing over 10 years in prison, Daibes, a felon, only ended up serving probation after striking an agreement with the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey.

“For purposes of the Federal Extortion Act, it makes no difference if the senator took an official act so long as he accepted the money and there was knowledge the money was in exchange for that official influence, even if he never carried out what he had promised he would do,” according to NBC Legal Analyst Danny Cevallos.

Menendez disclosed that his family had accepted gold bars in 2020. Daibes encountered bank fraud charges that could have netted him up to a decade in prison for lying about a nearly $2 million loan from Mariner’s Bank, where Daibes served as chairman.

Last year, however, New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed to let Daibes plead guilty to one count and serve probation. They said Daibes had repaid the loan. -Fox News

According to the report, Menendez, 69, is ‘close’ with US Attorney Philip Sellinger – having supported him for the position, while Sellinger had previously raised funds for Menendez’s campaign.

Menendez also allegedly pushed prosecutors to grant leniency to friends of his associates.

One businessman, Jose Uribe, bought Nadine Menendez a $60,000 Mercedes Benz after she killed a man in a 2018 crash.

You know it’s bad when…

Authored by Andrew Singer via CoinTelegraph.com,

In a world increasingly anxious about privacy and exploitation of one’s personal data by governments, corporations, social media platforms and banks, zero-knowledge proofs may offer some relief. 

Indeed, this emerging cryptographic protocol could partially remedy two rapidly growing global deficits: privacy and truth.

ZK-proofs have already found a home within the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector — enabling scaling protocols to make Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper, for example. But this may just be the beginning. 

One day, ZK-proofs could help convince your bank that your income is above a certain threshold — to qualify for a mortgage, for example — without revealing your actual income. Or prove to the election authorities that you are a resident or citizen without giving them your name, driver’s license or passport.

ZK-proofs open up a new world of potential applications, including “anonymous voting, decentralized games, proving personal information without fully disclosing your personal information, and fighting against fake news by proving the source of the news,” Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina tells Magazine.

To this point, some in the cryptographic community already view ZK-proofs as a potential weapon in the looming struggle against false information, including AI-altered documents, images and identities. 

“We may have a technological battle for truth coming up where ZK can play a critical part,” prize-winning cryptographer Jens Groth tells Magazine. “There is this idea of proof-carrying data,” i.e., data that carries within itself proofs of correctness including origin and provenance data, “so nirvana would be that all data we get are verified data.”

In some industry sectors like finance, ZK-proofs may profoundly alter how business is conducted. “We see this revolutionizing the audit industry,” Proven co-founder and CEO Rich Dewey tells Magazine in connection with ZK-enabled proof-of-solvency protocols, like the one his tech firm has developed. “The only question is the timeline.” 

Requiring fewer resources

Even though ZK-proofs were first presented back in the 1980s by researchers Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali and Charles Rackoff, only in the past decade have they had their “big breakthrough,” according to Baylina.

“Now it’s possible to prove any generic statement.” This statement — sometimes called a circuit — “can be programmed with a specific language and can be anything,” Baylina says. 

ZK-proofs are computationally complex, which has arguably slowed their development, but their core intuition seems simple enough. As described in a forthcoming paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: 

By using a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP), a party can prove to other parties that a computation was executed correctly. There is no need to replicate the computation—only the proof needs to be verified. Ideally, verifying a ZKP needs significantly less resources than re-executing the computation.”

What follows are some of the promising ZK-proof use cases on the table today — beyond the strict confines of the crypto sector — that may or may not involve the use of blockchains.

ZK-proofs require fewer resources when re-executing a computation. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

Verifying digital voting 

Electronic voting has been slow to catch on globally, but if and when it does, the odds are that ZK-proofs will play a prominent part. ZK-proofs are already being used in e-voting systems in trials in a number of Swiss towns and cantons, Dahlia Malkhi, distinguished scientist of Chainlink Labs, tells Magazine.

“ZK-proofs can add verifiability to an online election, allowing anyone to check that the votes were counted correctly,” explains Malkhi, without revealing how individuals voted — a key concern with electronic voting, she says. 

Cryptographic electronic voting systems have been around for decades, Malkhi adds, but their adoption has been moderate. On the technical side, one of the challenges has been “the compromise of end-user devices, which ZK-proofs don’t protect against.”

There are other obstacles, too, that are beyond ZK-proofs purview or ability to control — which also may suggest their limitations. 

Electronic voting requires a credible “digital identity” system, i.e., a link to “real world” information that isn’t always easy to secure. (Think of all those voting rolls on aged paper ledgers.) “ZK by itself cannot bootstrap e-voting,” Malkhi says. 

Cryptographer Groth, like Malkhi, cites the need for some sort of “trust anchor” to make ZK-proofs impactful in everyday life. “Zero-knowledge proofs often need a hook to reality.”  

Electronic “ballot boxes” like this could benefit from the added security of ZK-proofs. (Fred Miller)

Maybe one day, thanks to ZK-proofs, someone will be able to prove that they are older than 18 years of age or a United Kingdom citizen without having to pull out a driver’s license or passport, Groth tells Magazine, but “you cannot prove you’re over 18 out of thin air. You need the trust anchor that establishes your age,” he says, i.e., some authority that verifies your citizenship or birth year, adding:

In the future, organizations may issue ZK-friendly trust anchors, but right now, it is not common practice, so you have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.”

Privacy safeguards for CBDCs

Today, the world seems awash with central bank digital currency projects. According to the Atlantic Council, 130 countries representing 98% of global GDP are now exploring state-issued digital money. 

But CBDCs come freighted with privacy questions, and some fear they could be misused by governments to surveil their own populations, for instance.

That is why high privacy guarantees are “at the core of most CBDC projects today,” Jonas Gross, chairman of the Digital Euro Association, tells Magazine. 

ZK-proofs can be part of the solution, he adds, and it is for this reason that “various central banks are studying [ZK-proof] applications — for example, in the U.K., Japan and South Korea.” 

“If privacy is a top priority, ZK-proofs should be considered,” Remo Nyffenegger, a co-author of the St. Louis Fed paper cited above and research assistant at the Center for Innovative Finance at the University of Basel, tells Magazine. 

Indeed, the European Central Bank published a regulatory proposal for the digital euro in late June “and states therein that zero-knowledge proofs should be considered in the CBDC tech stack,” he adds.

Again, there may be limits on what exactly ZK-proofs can do by themselves. “I don’t see using ZK-proofs [alone] as sufficient because ongoing political discussions show that not all CBDC-related data will be obfuscated if ZK-proofs are used,” Gross comments. “High privacy also needs to be supported by regulation and educational efforts around the actual degree of privacy of a CBDC.”

Exposing an altered photo

AI apps are now so powerful that distinguishing between machine-generated images or documents and those created by human beings is already problematic. Things will only get worse, but ZK-proofs may offer at least a partial remedy.

“Blockchain tech and ZK-proofs could be used as built-in safeguards in these systems to verify the origin, authenticity, and ownership of AI-generated files and manage some of the risks associated with AI-generated content,” says Malkhi, while Groth adds:

There is interesting new research showing applications of ZK-proofs to demonstrate, for example, you’ve not altered a photo too much — i.e., combating fake news.”

High-end cameras that digitally sign photos along with metadata like location and timestamp are already on the market and can establish authenticity, continues Malkhi. The current problem is that these digital files are often enormous — much too large to post on a news service’s website, for instance. 

But with ZK-proofs, their file size can be substantially reduced, making them practical to use online while preserving critical verification elements. “It could prove that the recording or image has not been altered, maybe [including] even the date, without revealing identity or location or whatever,” adds Baylina. 

Proof-of-solvency with ZK-proofs?

Many believe that finance will be the first major business sector to be impacted by ZK-proofs. Indeed, 41% of respondents in Mina Foundation’s “State of Zero-knowledge Report 2022” agreed that finance was the industry “most in need of ZKPs,” far ahead of healthcare (12%), social media (5%) and e-commerce (3%).   

In March, Mexican cryptocurrency exchange Bitso announced a partnership with tech firm Proven to implement a “proof of solvency” solution that relies on ZK-proofs. This protocol will soon enable investors, regulators and others to know whether the exchange is solvent — i.e., its obligations are less than its assets — based on daily reports. 

One of the more ingenious aspects of Proven’s protocol is that it involves the exchange’s customers in the process of keeping the exchange honest. It’s a sort of crowd-sourcing version of auditing.

Co-founders Dewey and Agustin Lebron tell Magazine that every day, an exchange (e.g., Bitso) publishes a cryptographic proof-of-solvency attestation. And when it does, each individual client/user of the exchange is issued a “receipt” that reflects that individual’s unique holdings. Millions of digital receipts might be issued on a daily basis. 

What if one day a customer doesn’t receive a daily receipt, or it’s wrong? That user might take to Twitter or some other social media venue and complain or ask questions. Have others experienced something similar? A thread might grow.

This protocol relies on the law of big numbers. Bitso, for instance, has some five million users, and the presumption is that a critical mass of complainants might surface quickly, collectively waving a red flag that might prompt further investigation. 

This ZK-proofs-based protocol has another advantage, too, according to Bitso. It provides “a proof-of-solvency that can be confirmed without revealing all of that information to a third party. All an auditor needs to do is run the zk-SNARK protocol to come to the conclusion that the proof is true.” 

According to Groth, the use of ZK-proofs to demonstrate financial solvency “gained more traction after the FTX implosion.” Indeed, if such a protocol had been available last year, the Bahamas-based exchange’s meltdown might have been avoided, some say — or at least its wrongdoing would have come to light sooner. 

Interestingly, FTX Japan, now rebranded as Liquid Japan, has been using Proven’s proof-of-solvency technology since its recent re-launch in early September. “With the adoption of Proof of Solvency, we can now prove it [solvency] in a cryptographic manner that is verifiable by 3rd parties,” notes the company, adding:

We are starting to work on increasing the frequency of publishing the Proof of Solvency to 1x day by the end of 2023.”

A snapshot of Liquid’s proof-of-solvency widget. (Liquid)

“Immutable” tracking of goods

“ZK-proofs can become very relevant in the context of digital identities, whether they are issued by the government or private entities,” adds Nyffenegger. They could prove that you are not included on some government sanctions list without revealing who you are, for instance.

ZK-proofs potential use in supply chains is also frequently cited. But the difficulty here, as with e-voting, is that this requires connecting to a trustworthy “real-world information” source, which can authenticate the date an order was shipped from the factory, for instance. 

“ZK-proof-based supply chain tracking systems haven’t been battle-tested long enough in live environments,” notes Malkhi, adding that that could soon change:

The potential of ZK-proofs here is vast — helping to improve transparency and reduce the potential impact of fraud by enabling the immutable, real-time tracking of goods.” 

It should be added that while blockchains provide some of ZK-proof’s first exciting use cases, the technology does not require blockchain technology to work — but they are surely helpful.

“They are just a very suitable tool for blockchains because they provide proofs of correct computation — which aligns well with the need for verifiability on blockchains — while hiding as much information as possible,” Johannes Sedlmeir,  a researcher at the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, tells Magazine.

With a blockchain platform, a verifier can check if a certain “hash” appears somewhere on the blockchain “and hence binds me as a prover,” he adds. 

Blockchains aren’t required for Proven’s proof-of-solvency protocol to work, Lebron tells Magazine, though it’s always useful to have validators on-chain. It appears to be more of a “like to have” than a “need to have” circumstance. 

Obstacles remain

What obstacles still need to be overcome before ZK-proofs become commonplace? Malkhi has already cited the challenges with “bridging to the real world,” and this would well prove the biggest hurdle to surmount before ZK technology becomes mainstream, in her view. 

However, other barriers remain that might require laws and regulations to overcome. Will ZK claims be accepted in court, for instance? 

Scaling also remains a challenge in many use cases given that there is, at present, no “standardized way to ‘program,’” says Malkhi, making it difficult for developers to integrate proofs into their apps.

To this last point, Proven’s protocol with Bitso requires some five million unique “receipts” to be issued monthly (though soon daily) to Bitso users, but Proven says this isn’t an issue. “We figured out how to scale,” co-founder Lebron says.

Complexity is another potential sticking point. “For small- to medium-size assertions, we already have a good ZK system,” cryptographer Groth tells Magazine. “For large assertions, we still need to improve efficiency.” ZK-proofs like SNARKs can be cheap to verify, “but the prover pays a large performance overhead compared to native computation,” he adds.

Becoming “magnitudes cheaper”

The user experience needs to improve, too. “Using a technology secured by ZK-proofs for an everyday activity like buying groceries should be so seamless that the user doesn’t even know,” says Baylina. 

“The other thing we need is time,” Baylina says. Protocols like Polygon’s zk-Ethereum Virtual Machine are still new but are becoming more usable all the time. “As Polygon zkEVM matures, over the next year, we anticipate it will become orders of magnitudes cheaper.”

Given these potential roadblocks, how long might it take before the technology becomes commonplace? 

“I believe five years is too short of a time frame owing to the current TRLs [technology readiness levels] of ZK-proofs,” says Sedlmeir, referencing the finance sector specifically. While ZK-proofs have matured rapidly in recent years, they “are still complex to implement and prover performance is still a significant bottleneck.” 

There might be a transition period as ZK-proof works in tandem with traditional protocols, as in financial auditing. Proven’s Dewey envisioned working “hand in glove” with traditional Big Four audit firms for a time. 

Vast potential

In sum, ZK-proofs still face challenges. They can’t work in isolation. They still need to be attached to a truth source or “oracle.” Doubts about computational complexity, usability and scalability remain as well. 

But if these hurdles are surmounted, ZK-proofs could offer a 21st-century solution to not only the “fake news” challenge but also the privacy quandary as with CBDCs, providing just enough anonymity for users to comfortably use state-issued digital money but enough accountability so governments can be assured fraudsters or money launderers aren’t infiltrating their networks. 

As the technology and the underlying infrastructure improve, summarizes Malkhi, “ZK-proofs have vast potential to enable an internet where the majority of contracts are underpinned by cryptographic guarantees.”

In a surprise and stunning admission, given only a week ago these words might have been unthinkable coming straight from the White House, Biden’s national security council spokesman John Kirby bluntly admitted that funding for Ukraine is “coming near the end of the rope” and is “not going to be indefinite.“

He had said the words in a Wednesday afternoon press briefing wherein he unveiled a new $200 million arms package for Ukraine, which is drawn from previously Congressionally approved funds. 

WATCH: White House spokesperson John Kirby announces that funding for Ukraine is “coming near to the end of the rope” and is “not going to be indefinite.”

pic.twitter.com/wmcOkC2ADv

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 12, 2023

Kirby detailed that this latest package includes HIMARS ammunition, artillery shells, anti-tank weapons, and other equipment. Here’s what he said:

“In the near term, we’ve got appropriations and authorities…for Ukraine and for Israel, but you don’t wanna be trying to bake in long-term support when you’re at the end of the rope.”

But interestingly this new $200 million was apparently surplus from the infamous “accounting error”: 

According to the Pentagon, the $200 million package for Ukraine used funds made available by a Pentagon “accounting error” that overvalued previous arms shipped into the conflict. As the White House has been struggling to get Congress to authorize more Ukraine spending, the Pentagon has said it has about $5 billion in Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the US to ship weapons straight from its own military stockpiles.

According to more details of the package, the $200 million will purchase:

• AIM-9M missiles for air defense
• Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (c-UAS) equipment
• Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS)
• 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds
• Precision aerial munitions
• Electronic warfare equipment
• Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles
• AT-4 anti-armor systems
• Small arms and more than 16 million rounds of small arms ammunition
• Demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing
• Spare parts, training munitions, maintenance, and other field equipment

In more “normal” times we might expect Kirby’s bluntly asserting that Ukraine funding is “not going to be indefinite” to result in a massive D.C. beltway and mainstream media uproar, but those same MSM politicians pundits are now consumed with Israel-Gaza developments.

John Kirby says Ukraine aid is “coming to the end of the rope.” An odd idiom for the occasion, similar to being “at the end of one’s rope,” which is generally interpreted to mean running out of patience and/or the inability to deal with a problem. Was Kirby being accidentally… pic.twitter.com/fiw16RnFm4

— Chebureki Man (@CheburekiMan) October 12, 2023

The spotlight has certainly moved away from Ukraine. Instead, the administration is preparing to bolster urgent defense aid to Israel as it continues anti-Hamas operations in Gaza. The Pentagon has said it is committed to doing “both” – that is providing defense aid and weapons to Israel and Kiev. Military assets are now being moved to the eastern Mediterranean region.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

When NBC News published a hit piece claiming that Twitter/X’s Community Notes fact checking system rarely corrects posts and asserting that they “gained access” to the system, both claims were instantly revealed to be untrue… by Community Notes itself.

“Elon Musk has touted Community Notes as a way to fight false and misleading information on X,” NBC News tweeted.

The outlet then declared”@NBCNews gained access to the system, and found that on posts containing known misinformation, few posts were ever corrected. Many fact-checks were delayed.”

The claims were quickly revealed to be complete BS, hilariously by Community Notes:

OMG I gained access too!!! pic.twitter.com/0PtZnUNwcL

— PhotographicFloridian (@JackLinFLL) October 11, 2023

NBC just got hit with a community note for spreading misinformation about community notes. pic.twitter.com/omYJCfTb08

— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) October 11, 2023

One note reads, “NBC did not ‘gain access’ to any special Twitter system they merely had one of the many thousands of community notes contributors show them that some misleading posts had yet to have any notes added.”

It adds that “Any 6 month old account with a verified phone number can join the program.”

Another points out that it is completely erroneous to suggest some back room employee is approving notes, as implied by NBC.

NBC News set out to make people think Community Notes doesn’t work and ended up proving the exact opposite:

NBC post about Community Notes gets Community Noted pic.twitter.com/6bSXZQH8hg

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 11, 2023

Exactly

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2023

Community notes strikes again.

NBC is desperately trying to maintain their fake narrative. pic.twitter.com/wCIo0VgDJz

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) October 6, 2023

Community notes have more journalistic credibility than news organizations now… especially NBC.

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) October 11, 2023

As we highlighted yesterday, The EU is threatening to block X in its member states, claiming that Musk is allowing ‘disinformation’ to be spread, but without citing any specific examples:

I still don’t know what they’re talking about!

Maybe it’s in the mail or something.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2023

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Summit Vitamins – super charge your health and well being.

Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Chipotle Mexican Grill plans to raise menu prices for the fourth time in two years. Millennials and Gen-Zers will have a shitfit when they discover additional price hikes.

“For the first time in over a year, we will be taking a modest price increase to offset inflation,” Chipotle Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Laurie Schalow wrote in a statement to CNBC. She did not reveal which menu items would be affected. 

Last summer, the burrito chain announced a price hike that increased the most popular entrees on the menu by more than $1. Months before that, in 1Q22, the company raised prices by 4%, and in June 2021, the company raised prices to offset soaring labor costs. 

Young folks will lose their minds when they hear about the next round of Chipotle price hikes. Many can’t afford rent and groceries, barely have any personal savings left, and have racked up insurmountable credit card debt to survive President Biden’s disastrous economy where inflation is eating households alive. Many of these folks are still living at home. 

Millennials crying about life, rent, groceries.

“and all we do, we record a video and post it on social media. Then we close up the app and go about our day.”

Do you have sympathy for their situation? Or do you want to tell them, “try voting differently next time.” I sort of… pic.twitter.com/KEZ3rjxdxw

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) October 12, 2023

With the fourth price hike in two years, Chipotle is walking a tightrope where customers might pull back on restaurant spending, trade down for cheaper chains, or start making their own lunch/dinner. In April, CEO Brian Niccol mentioned that while the brand had demonstrated its pricing power, it would refrain from further price hikes. Back then, menu prices had risen by about 10% compared to the same period the previous year.

Consumers may already be revolting. According to Google data, internet searches for “Boycott Chipotle” appear to be spiking. 

As of this week, a chicken burrito bowl (without any extra guac or queso) in NYC is around $11. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

“Republicans’ weakness invites terror.” 

Those words on X (formerly known as Twitter) from the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin perfectly captured our new politics of chaos.

Rubin and others either accused Republicans of benefitting or actually inviting terrorism with the removal of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

In reality, the vacant speaker’s chair will not materially affect our response to the massacre in Israel.

Moreover, you have to take leave of any sense of reality to believe that Hamas was watching the U.S. House of Representatives to coordinate this attack.

The massacre happened to occur on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago.

And, no, the Yom Kippur War was not launched due to any looming motion to vacate the chair of then-House Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.).

Indeed, when that war started, Vice President Spiro Agnew was preparing to resign over a tax-evasion scandal. No one suggested that his pending vacancy invited the 1973 attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria.

Those also were bitter political times, but there still remained a few red lines in politics. There were some things that the leadership of both major political parties would not do.

After House Democrats voted unanimously, along with eight Republicans, to vacate the speaker’s chair, many politicians and some pundits are now deriding the GOP for the chaos of not having a House speaker as a war rages in the Middle East.

The decision of House Democrats to support the effort of members like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to decapitate the House leadership was a defining moment for the House as an institution.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) expressed shock at the vote that she helped to engineer, intoning that “this is a solemn day in the U.S. House of Representatives … Right-wing MAGA extremism has enveloped the Republican Party and taken over the business of the People’s House.”

The moment represented a final collapse of any institutional loyalty in the House.

Some of us have a deep love for the House as an institution. I began my association with the House as a teenaged leadership page in the 1970s and continued through to my legal representation of the House in federal court. I have testified more than 100 times over the last four decades on a wide array of constitutional and statutory issues. I also have represented both Democratic and Republican members in court.

Over that long period, I never lost faith that the House would rise to the occasion when members had to act in the interests of not just the institution but the nation.

As a Madisonian scholar, my faith rested in the strong institutional interests left to members by the Constitution. While shifting majorities and political issues have often left bitter divisions, Madison gave all members incentives to jealously protect their institution in carrying out constitutional functions.

Despite our periods of political rage and division, no Congress has ever vacated the chair. That says a great deal about our politics today. There was a time when the Democrats would never have vacated the chair just to disrupt the institution. Doing so is the politics of chaos to fit an age of rage. It is the same rage that leads someone like Rubin to declare that “we have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.”

Consider the choice that the Democrats made with this vote. Former Speaker McCarthy insisted that his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), assured him that she would never support such a vote if a member like Gaetz sought to remove him. This past week, she denied making such a pledge. However, putting aside who is lying, it was a pledge that she should have made and kept.

The Democrats elected to support a motion from a member — Gaetz — who they have denounced and despised for years. They did so despite the fact that McCarthy was facing opposition for having worked and compromised with Democrats to keep the government open. More importantly, they did so in the full knowledge that they were certain to get a more strident House Speaker when Republicans select a replacement. The chances of getting bipartisan legislation passed would be diminished, not enhanced, by the move. Yet, not one Democrat broke ranks and voted to prevent such chaos.

This week, McCarthy seemed to dangle the chance that he could be reinstated as the GOP divides between Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). A number of House Republicans are citing the war in Israel as calling for immediate action to fill the seat.

The fact, however, is that the Biden administration has all of the money and the ability needed to respond to this crisis. Congress has allowed billions in dollars to float around the Defense Department and other agencies. When the Obama administration effectively launched a war against Libya, it funded the entire campaign out of loose cash.

This crisis is not a vacuum of power — it is a vacuum of principle. McCarthy was a thrill-kill for his opponents. While expressing alarm at how the House could not operate with the speakership vacated, not a single Democrat crossed the aisle to support the institution by opposing the motion to vacate. Indeed, a small number of Democrats could have merely voted “present” to avoid the decapitation of the House leadership. Instead, they apparently wanted to disrupt the House.

So, Democrats supplied all but eight votes to vacate the chair and then immediately ran to cameras to express alarm that the House was now unable to function.

In her tweet, Rubin showed how chaos is worth the effort by accusing Republicans of fostering the terrorism that massacred more than 1,000 Israelis:

“How about this: With US House in chaos and US military promotions on hold, Hamas struck. Republicans’ weakness invites terror.”

It takes pure rage to seize upon an unspeakable crime against humanity and use it as a cudgel against one’s political opponents.

Even without the war, vacating the speaker’s chair is not just dysfunctional but dangerous for a democracy. It shows that there is no longer a loyal opposition that would support either a president or a House speaker to preserve the functioning of government.

The vote did not invite terrorism — it invited chaos. And it has now succeeded to a degree that should give pause to every House Democrat — and to the eight Republicans who joined them — when they next consider yielding to the temptations of the moment as members of Congress.

The Adani saga has taken its latest turn, and FT’s Dan McCrum, famous for helping unveil the fraud at Wirecard, is having his say. 

The now-controversial Adani Group, labeled “the largest con in corporate history” at the beginning of this year by short seller Hindenburg Research, “appears to have imported billions of dollars of coal at prices well above market value”, according to a brand new report by FT, authored in part by McCrum.

The new FT report, published Thursday morning, says that data shows Adani “has been inflating fuel costs and led to millions of Indian consumers and businesses overpaying for electricity”. 

FT says that Adani has been using offshore intermediaries in Taiwan, Dubai and Singapore to import $5 billion worth of coal at prices that were “at times more than double” the market price. A Taiwanese entrepreneur, recently identified by the Financial Times as a significant concealed stakeholder in Adani firms, owns one of these companies.

FT further scrutinized 30 coal shipments from Indonesia to India by an Adani enterprise between 2019 and 2021. In every instance, the recorded import prices substantially exceeded the listed export values. Over the course of these shipments, an inexplicable surge of over $70 million in total value was observed.

The initial accusation of inflating fuel expenses dates back seven years to an investigation conducted by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), an economic crime-fighting unit under the Ministry of Finance. In a 2016 notification, the DRI listed five Adani firms and another five supplied by the group among 40 importers implicated in a probe for supposedly “artificially inflating” the cost of Indonesian coal.

This alleged scheme aimed to divert funds overseas and overbill electricity providers. The DRI notification indicated that the comparison between export and import records revealed an extreme overvaluation ranging from 50% to 100%.

Furthermore, the DRI notice pointed out that while coal was shipped directly from Indonesia to India, the invoices from suppliers took a circuitous route through one or more intermediary invoicing agents located in a third country. This was done solely to add complexity, a tactic characteristic of trade-based money laundering, and to artificially boost the coal’s landed cost in India, the FT report noted. 

Financial Times reported that three intermediary firms—Hi Lingos in Taipei, Taurus Commodities General Trading in Dubai, and Pan Asia Tradelink in Singapore—appear to have received significant payments from the Adani group for coal supplies. According to Indian import records from July 2021 onwards, Adani disbursed a total of $4.8 billion to these companies for coal acquired at considerably higher prices than market rates.

Financial Times uncovered data on 2,000 coal shipments, amounting to 73 million tonnes, declared as Indian imports by Adani companies between September 2021 and July 2023, as recorded in the Export Genius database. The principal importer in these transactions was Adani Enterprises.

During this period, for the 42 million tonnes of coal sourced from its own operations, Adani declared an average cost of $130 per tonne. However, for the 31 million tonnes obtained through these three middlemen, the average declared price per tonne soared to $155—a 20% markup translating to almost $800 million in added costs.

Hi Lingos, operating from a residential location in Taipei, was cited as the supplier for 12.9 million tonnes of coal across 428 shipments from Australia and Indonesia. Adani expended approximately $2 billion for these supplies. This company is owned by Chang Chung-Ling (photo below from FT), a Taiwanese entrepreneur who has been previously flagged by both Hindenburg Research and Financial Times as a person of interest. Hindenburg identified him in their original report as a “director of multiple Adani entities”. 

The emergence of this piece may explain why Adani went on the offensive against award winning journalist McCrum days ago, as was pointed out on X by Hindenburg Research CEO Nathan Anderson. 

Adani called the article a “renewed attempt” by the paper to “rehash old and baseless allegations to tarnish the name and standing” of the company. In response to Thursday’s FT report, Adani Group denied any wrongdoing and said the story is based on an “old, baseless allegation”, and is “a clever recycling and selective misrepresentation of publicly available facts and information”.

“Adani is attacking journalist Dan McCrum at the Financial Times (FT) over an upcoming article,” Anderson wrote earlier this week after Adani’s press release. “The last company that tried that was Wirecard, later found to be the largest fraud in German history.”

Major new FT investigation into Adani shows trade-based money laundering involving $5b in imports since 2021 alone.

Report reveals ongoing dummy invoicing & overseas entities used to inflate coal prices, passing costs on to customers.https://t.co/T1gHylxRfp

— Hindenburg Research (@HindenburgRes) October 12, 2023

The news follows short seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report at the beginning of this year that accused Adani of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud.” 

Hindenburg’s report initially led to a $50 billion selloff in Adani’s corporate empire, but most of the enterprises’ entities have steadied over the course of the year. Adani, in response, called Hindenburg’s short report “bogus” and threatened legal action. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

There is very little wiggle-room left in many household budgets, and any decline in income will crack the ice.

A recent article on a well-worn topic–the rising costs of vehicle ownership–caught my attention. How the Costs of Car Ownership Add Up (New York Times). There’s nothing particularly new revealed in the piece, or particularly surprising for anyone who has 1) shopped for a new vehicle 2) shopped for a used vehicle 3) had their vehicle repaired or serviced recently 4) fueled up at a gas station or 5) paid auto insurance.

The most striking point was not explicitly said: these astounding increases in costs are putting many American households on very thin ice financially. There are plenty of statistics saying the same thing: a large percentage of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and have less than $1,000 in a rainy-day / emergency fund, wage increases are lagging the soaring cost of living, and so on.

But statistics tend to be abstractions. Specific line-item increases on goods and services we all buy bring it home with a are you kidding me? 2X4 upside the head.

I have no idea if the five households surveyed are typical, but the costs of vehicle ownership in each case closely matches the AAA average annual cost of about $12,000 per vehicle.

I was also struck by the role dumb luck played in households’ vehicular fortunes. Those who happened to buy a new or used vehicle in the years leading up to 2020 are now hugging themselves in delight, especially if they were prescient enough to buy a modest-priced vehicle with high resale value due to the durability of the models–for example, a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic.

Those who were forced by circumstance to buy vehicles post 2020 have suffered spectacularly prohibitive price increases in both used and new vehicles.

A Corolla or Civic bought new in 2017 or 2018 with some modest haggling (“let me check with my manager,” etc.) that has been well-maintained with moderate mileage is still worth close to its purchase price five or six years later. Vehicles with high resale values bought used pre-2020 have also seen remarkable increases in valuation, as those who cannot afford a new vehicle are forced to bid on a limited number of more affordable used cars / trucks.

As for repairs and service expenses–they’re inspiring many are you kidding me? moments. Anecdotally, I’m hearing about air-conditioning repairs at dealerships costing $3-4,000, basic service charges around $300, and so on. For many, these are “no freaking way” prices.

Way back in 2017 / 2018, dealer financing at 1.9% or even lower was common for buyers with decent credit. One of the vehicle owners surveyed in the NYT article is paying 15% on his used car loan, almost ten times the rate available five years ago. That increase will punch a hole in just about any budget.

I also notice none of those surveyed performed any of their own maintenance. I have never been a high-earner, and have generally scraped by on the margins of the economy, so extreme frugality has been my core strategy. We still change the oil in our cars, as modest a savings as this might be, and have done repairs when they were within our skillset: go to an auto parts store, borrow or rent the plug-in device to read the codes off your vehicle’s controller board, discover it’s a sensor you can replace for a few bucks, etc.

But the 2X4-upside-the-head reality is there’s not much anyone can do about skyrocketing ownership costs. The Florida household’s vehicle insurance costs were so high I checked with a Florida correspondent to see if these rates were typical. Yes, auto insurance costs in Florida are ridiculously high.

At $12,000 a year per car, that’s $24,000 a year for two cars. That means the household has to earn at least $30,000 just to own two cars. With new vehicle loan payments exceeding $700 a month–over $8,000 a year–the obvious conclusion is a new vehicle is now really only affordable to top 20% households, those earning $130,000 or more annually.

The financial ice is getting thin because these aren’t the only big-ticket increases in essentials households have been dealt. As I noted on this chart of inflation since 2008, the big increases are all in big-ticket essentials such as healthcare, college tuition, childcare and shelter, while the declining prices are in lower-cost occasional purchases of TVs, toys and software–purchases that make up trivial percentages of household annual budgets.

Consider the ever-heavier burdens of healthcare insurance, which is especially burdensome for the self-employed, who have no employer to share the costs:

The rise of paper-pushing, regulatory-compliance administrative costs has pushed up zero-value increases in prices throughout the economy. As frontline healthcare workers burn out from overwork, the healthcare sector loads up on more administrators:

Who are paid handsomely:

How did American higher education survive before student loans were available to pay all those administrators? It certainly is a mystery how universities functioned without students borrowing $1.77 trillion:

Then there are the policy-driven concentrations of wealth and income in the top 10%, who have seen their share of the nation’s wealth and income soar while the bottom 80% lost ground:

I fear the ice is now too thin to withstand the slightest increase in financial pressure. There is very little wiggle-room left in many household budgets, and any decline in income will crack the ice.

The only way to significantly reduce expenses is to move to states with lower big-ticket costs such as shelter, insurance and property taxes, and get as lean and healthy as possible to limit one’s exposure to healthcare expenses. But moving to a new state is asking a lot of households, and few will consider it short of a major crack in the ice.

In terms of advancing one’s Self-Reliance, it’s wise to take control of as much as we can in our lives and move to thicker ice as prudently and promptly as we can.

*  *  *

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A left-wing Philadelphia journalist who was murdered earlier this month allegedly began grooming his killer in a gay relationship that started when the accused man was 15-years-old, and had threatened to post sexually explicit videos of him online,” police say.

Josh Kruger was murdered Oct. 2 after someone entered his home, shot him seven times at the base of his stairs, and then fled. Kruger ran outside seeking help from his neighbors and collapsed, where police found them after responding to call just before 1:30 a.m.

The 39-year-old was rushed to rushed to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died.

Now, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the family of Kruger’s alleged killer, 19-year-old Robert Davis, says Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs that began when Davis was just 15-years-old. Davis remains at large.

As the Inquirer reports:

The family’s contentions come as detectives separately discovered and are investigating what multiple law enforcement sources have called explicit photos and messages in Kruger’s phone. The sources, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, did not say whether the images or messages were connected to Davis, but said they were “disturbing” and have been turned over to the department’s Special Victims Unit for further analysis.

…

When he was about 15, she said, his troubles intensified after he started sneaking out in the middle of the night and coming home high on drugs.

They said Davis told them he was seeing an “older white woman” he met online who “worked for the government.”

They frequently saw the name “Josh” pop up in messages on his phone, they said, and when they asked who Josh was, Davis told them it was the woman’s brother, who was gay.

It was only later, in their call with him Friday, they said, that Davis told them he had been seeing Kruger all along.

Following Kruger’s murder, many highlighted his frequent mocking of conservatives over rising crime in Democrat-run cities. 

In January, he tweeted: “It’s a tiresome and incredibly outdated bigoted trope to claim all gay men are pedophiles,” adding “if I’ve seen any consistent thing with the modern American right, it’s that anything they accuse you of, they’re actually guilty of themselves.”

It’s a tiresome and incredibly outdated bigoted trope to claim all gay men are pedophiles. Also, if I’ve seen any consistent thing with the modern American right, it’s that anything they accuse you of, they’re actually guilty of themselves. https://t.co/Si90uQFzqO

— Josh Kruger (@JoshKrugerPHL) January 18, 2023

Oh?

In addition to big Ed Buck vibes, Kruger also said that ‘Pizzagate,’ a theory of an elite pedophilia ring in Washington DC which came to light during the 2016 election after a “pizza-themed map” belonging to John Podesta was discovered, “is the reality of the fringes in America,” which he said justified “a slow system of checks and balances.”

Pizzagate is the reality of the fringes in America and why, for all its terribleness, a slow system of checks and balances is probably best.

— Josh Kruger (@JoshKrugerPHL) March 25, 2017

The Inquirer also reported that Kruger had HIV, meaning he was knowingly exposing Davis (and others?) to the disease.

UPDATE: Josh Kruger was a pedophile knowingly giving HIV to underage boys

It wasn’t far-right websites, it was Josh Kruger https://t.co/5moWZbdAx8

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 11, 2023

Journalist Jack Posobiec of Human Events has noted several prominent Democrat politicians who came out in support of Kruger following the murder.

Hi John Fetterman! Josh Kruger was a pedophile knowingly giving HIV to underage boys https://t.co/vpLXQuQHGv

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 11, 2023

Hello Ben! Josh Kruger was a pedophile knowingly giving HIV to underage boys. Did he ever talk to you about this? https://t.co/U7a6wO2qTF

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 11, 2023

Hi Mayor Kenney! Did you know Josh Kruger (your staffer) was a pedophile knowingly giving HIV to underage boys on drugs? https://t.co/V8CYemMiwg

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 11, 2023

Hi @malcolmkenyatta! Why did you delete this? pic.twitter.com/cZNlz3SZxz

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 12, 2023

There’s always a tweet https://t.co/XaSRxOARus pic.twitter.com/Jk30qWaEkx

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 11, 2023