Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

A teacher at an Illinois elementary school was fired by the board after conservative influencer Libs of TikTok pointed out that the ‘non-binary’ person was also a Satan worshipper and had a history of bipolar disorder with mania and psychosis.

The Homer Community Consolidated School District 33C took action after the teacher Kris Martin’s online posts promoting Satanism, as well as anti-police rhetoric were exposed.

District Superintendent Craig Schoppe wrote in an August 17 statement “As you may have heard or seen online, there has been some question and concern with regards to 33C hiring protocol and details surrounding the conditions of hire for new employees,” before announcing an investigation was underway.

Now Martin has been terminated, much to the delight of parents in attendance at the latest board meeting:

The superintendent also spoke at the special board meeting. He apologized to the parents and promised to improve @Homer33c’s hiring processes. pic.twitter.com/lCIcxD5qV4

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 20, 2023

The question remains, why did this person get hired as an elementary school teacher in the first place?

And how many more are out there?

Trans nonbinary elementary teacher shows classroom setup including massive progress pride flag, and social justice and LGBTQ themed decorations. pic.twitter.com/PCXlwUykgZ

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 22, 2023

This is a school principal. These are the people in charge of your children’s education. pic.twitter.com/kJOZtPhmal

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 21, 2023

This is an elementary school librarian in Oklahoma: pic.twitter.com/9ky6y7LPkK

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 21, 2023

These are the people teaching your kids:

California teacher blasts school as “homophobic” for allegedly making her remove a progress pride flag from her classroom.

Her profile photo shows her wearing a shirt that says “educating is activism” in what appears to be a classroom.… pic.twitter.com/cn4zEhPRHF

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 20, 2023

They want your kids learning about porn, trans toddlers & sexual kinks by drag queen teachers & groomers.

That’s why they’re upset that @prageru made a new curriculum for schools.

Sign the petition to support getting the Prageru curriculum in schools! 👉🏻 https://t.co/17c2An2Ocv pic.twitter.com/tCjaOpjZHp

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 23, 2023

Received this from a follower. Hanging in a middle school in NY. Homeschool your kids pic.twitter.com/9DKFoeHnkw

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 23, 2023

Parent blasts @wwschools after a teacher allegedly groomed a 2nd grade girl for 2 years. He wrote her letters with invisible ink and gave her a light to view them.

The mom filed a restraining order and complained to the school numerous times. The school allegedly did nothing. pic.twitter.com/NS7zU5Sg5e

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 21, 2023

Meet Rick Busselle. He’s running for school board in Bowling Green City Schools, Ohio.

He thinks “your God is an asshole” if you don’t want to give your kids the Covid vaccine.

Would you want this person in charge of your kid’s education? pic.twitter.com/YNPzu7eG4P

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 21, 2023

*  *  *

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The final week of earnings season, traditionally reserved for a slew of retail companies, was also the one we got the loudest hint yet that the US consumer is indeed starting to hit their limit, with retailer after retailer plunging by double digits on either weak earnings, poor guidance or some combination of both. Not surprisingly, the Retail ETF got crushed in all 5 days this week, sharply underperforming the market every day of the week.

And while some retail optimists have asked “did anything truly change?” the truth, as Goldman consumer specialist trader Scott Feiler notes, “anytime the group underperforms 5 days in a row vs the market and over 500 bps total on the week, it’d be a bit naïve to “say “nothing new here.” To be sure, there have been some clearly adverse developments – specifically when it comes to the rapid deterioration in consumer credit as highlighted in the dismal earnings from Macy’s and Nordstrom – that bear watching especially with student debt payments set to resume in a coupe of months, this trend will only get worse, while the gradual phasing out of the trillion-dollar deficit funded “Bidenomics” stimmy.

So what drove the substantial weakness in the group this week?

1. July was the best month of the quarter, but the focus has already turned to August, when things turned much uglier. Outside of Foot Locker, nearly every company spoke to an acceleration in trends in July. This was the first notable acceleration in trends for a full month since things saw their initial slowdown in March. While some companies early in the earnings season spoke to August being strong still (WMT, ROST, TJX), this was more consumables based or defensive type companies. As Feiler notes, while “August certainly does not seem like it’s fallen off the cliff across the board, the view from this week’s round of results was it’s much choppier as a whole than July was. Nordstrom for example spoke to a slowdown at both of their banners in the month.”

2. Shrink (i.e., theft) – Numerous companies spoke about this. Some were unexpected (DKS), some were expected (ULTA) and some spoke about it again as a reason for margin weakness, after just having done so last quarter (DLTR). What all companies had in common was all stocks traded down on this. The debate has made its way into how much margin recovery can be expected from this into 2024-2025, if at all(seemingly becoming more accepted that companies will have 100 bps lower gross margins vs historical for the foreseeable future). The flipside is that retailers now have a scapegoat for continued margin erosion (and inventory reduction): the Soros army of handpicked big city DAs, who have largely decriminalized retail theft.

3. Consumer Credit – will this continue?: Macy’s touched on credit concerns earlier in the week by speaking to higher than expected delinquencies in June and July. There was some skepticism originally from many if this was truly breaking news or not: was “this is just a normalization to pre-covid levels” and “this is more of a low-income issue.” And while to the Goldman trader both somewhat reasonable fair pieces of feedback, it felt notable that Nordstrom (higher income customer) spoke later in the week as well to the trend, noting that “we have seen delinquencies rising gradually and they are now above pre-pandemic levels, which could result in higher credit losses in the second half and into 2024.”

The next round of industry master trust data comes on September 12th. Data from the Goldman Financials team shows it’s usually 6 quarters before net charge-offs peak, following peak loan growth. Peak loan growth occurred this cycle at the end of Q1 23. See the 3 exhibits below on this from prior cycles that show this.

4. Positioning: One mitigating factor behind the big drops across the retail space is that according to the Goldman trading desk, many of the names down the most this week, while certainly not perfect , had logic for why they should have been down, and also had a positioning dynamic to them as well (DLTR long vs DG short, DKS a top-line beat was expected, JWN was the preferred long this quarter in dept store world, BURL was expected to have a better print post TJX/ROST). Results did disappoint, either sales, margins or the guides, but crowded – and wrong – positioning also had a multiplier effect on the reactions it seemed.

* * *

Finally, those wondering where the next big hit will come from, look no further than the student loan payers who suspended payments during Covid and who will have to resume those payments come October. According to Cohort Analytics, that cohort of shoppers made up more than 10% of spending at several national brands in 2022 (above the dotted line in the chart below). Their spending also outperformed non-borrowers at several brands (left of the solid line n the chart below), suggesting that their lack of payments may have buoyed their spending in recent years (well, duh). That leaves dozens of national brands that benefited meaningfully from the pause in student loans (primarily those in the upper-left quadrant below), that may be more exposed to that shopper base as payments resume.

Within Travel, Frontier Airlines was the most sensitive to the Covid-Suspended cohort in 2022, with 11% share and 2 points of outspending from the cohort. In contrast, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines both had 7% share and 10 points of under-spending. Airbnb had a high 11% share from the cohort but with 4 points of underspending.

Within the Home sector, Peloton was most sensitive, with 13% share and 11 points of outspending from the Covid-Suspended cohort; Sherwin Williams had 6% share and 10 points of under-spending. IKEA, Ashley, HomeGoods, Wayfair, and Lowe’s all had 10%+ share from the cohort but the cohort also underspent Non-Borrowers by ~5 points.

Most Apparel and Department Stores had over 10% share from the Covid-Suspended cohort: Old Navy had the highest share at 14%; Nordstrom Full Price had the lowest share at 8%. Old Navy and Burlington each had 3 points of outspending from the cohort, while most others saw minimal to underspending.

More in the full reports (here and here) available to pro subs.

Authored by Nathan Worcester and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden’s comments that all Americans will “likely” be advised to get a new COVID vaccine as new variants spread through the country are “irresponsible,” according to Stanford University Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for a new vaccine—that is necessary, that works,” Mr. Biden told reporters in South Lake Tahoe, California, on Aug. 25.

“And tentatively, not decided finally yet, tentatively it is recommended—it is likely to be recommended—that everybody get it, no matter whether they got it before,” he added.

Since early July, COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise domestically, with three new variants of the disease spreading across the country. The uptick has resulted in some businesses, schools, and hospitals reinstating mask mandates.

Multiple drug companies, including Pfizer, Novavax, and Moderna, have introduced new vaccines they say will be effective against the EG.5, or ERIS, variant of COVID-19.

“It never occurred to me that an American president would be the number one spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company, but here we are,” Dr. Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

“It’s irresponsible to make this kind of public health advice for the entire American public in the absence of excellent randomized trial evidence, which has not been produced by the pharmaceutical companies,” he added.

“The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] never asked for them to produce them,” Dr. Bhattacharya said, referring to vaccines targeting the new COVID variants.

The Standard professor said that authorities are incorrectly treating COVID booster shots ” just like the flu vaccine, that you just update it from year to year.”

But, in contrast with the COVID-19 injections, for flu vaccines “there’s a long track record where the safety record of the vaccine is understood,” Dr. Bhattacharya said.

“Not requiring randomized trial evidence for updating the vaccine is irresponsible. It’s using a different mechanism than the flu vaccine. You can’t extend the experience you have with the flu vaccine to this vaccine,” he said.

The professor also picked up on President Biden’s comment that everyone will likely be advised to take the new vaccine “no matter whether they got it before.”

“Here where they’re saying is, essentially like it’s amnesty—We’re all going to be treated as if we’re unvaccinated with regard to this vaccine,” Dr. Bhattacharya said.

According to CNBC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials told reporters Thursday that the vaccines are expected to become available to the public in mid-September, though they are still pending approval from the FDA.

An independent CDC advisory committee is scheduled to meet on Sept. 12 to vote on recommended guidelines for eligibility for the new COVID-19 jabs.

During the press briefing, CDC and FDA officials advised that both agencies intended to urge Americans to get an updated COVID-19 shot, as well as the flu shot and the recently approved RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine produced by GlaxoSmithKline.

“Vaccination is going to continue to be key this year because immunity wanes and because the COVID-19 virus continues to change,” a CDC official said.

Dr. Paul Marik of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care was scathing in his response to the president’s announcement.

“It’s insanity,” he told The Epoch Times.

“I think the vaccines have failed, and this is untested,” he added.

“Making a new vaccine against a new variant which is untested makes no sense,” Dr. Marik continued, saying that he “can’t see any group of patients who would benefit from a vaccine.”

“We need to know more information,” he added.

Samantha Flom contributed to this report. 

While President Biden has repeatedly claimed that the Justice Department has full autonomy and isn’t ‘weaponized’ against political opponents, a new report by the NY Post suggests otherwise.

Just weeks before Special Counsel Jack Smith brought charges against Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, one of his top aides met with the White House counsel’s office, raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts against Biden’s top political opponent going into the 2024 election.

According to the report, Jay Bratt, one of Smith’s minions since November 2022, took a meeting with the White House on March 31 of this year with deputy chief of staff for the WH counsel’s office, Caroline Saba. The two were joined in the 10am meeting by FBI agent Danielle Ray.

Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith’s office.

The 63-year-old Bratt also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump’s legal team was in discussions with the National Archives over the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate prior to a formal investigaiton.

Bratt had a third meeting in the White House in September 2021, this time with Katherine Reily, an advisor to the White House chief of staff’s office.

The logs offer no information about what was discussed at the meetings.

Critics and legal experts questioned why Bratt was taking meetings at all with the White House counsel’s office while part of an active investigation into President Biden’s likely 2024 Republican opponent.

“There is no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] guy to be meeting with the White House except if it’s coordinated by the highest levels,” said former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a one-time top federal prosecutor in the Southern District. -NY Post

Saba left the White House in May to attend law school.

As Mark Levin noted on X;

THIS IS A MASSIVE STORY!

That’s why it will be ignored by the Democrat Party media.  That said, Bratt not only met with Biden’s staff at the White House while investigating Donald Trump and weeks before Trump was charged, Bratt is the senior DOJ official who insisted on securing a warrant and sending an FBI SWAT team to Mar-a-Lago; and, Bratt stands accused by Stanley Woodward, who represents Walt Nauta in the documents case, of extorting him (Bratt allegedly told Woodward that the judgeship he is seeking has a better chance if his client turns on Trump).  Judge Cannon should order, from the bench, that all records related to Bratt’s meetings and discussions at the White House be preserved and provided to the court; and, she should ask the DC judge who has been dragging his feet in his secret review of the allegation against Bratt by Woodward transfer that matter and all the information related to it to her as it clearly bears on the document case that is now before her and in her jurisdiction.  

Yet again, I am forced to ask, where the hell are Trump’s lawyers?  They should file a motion immediately seeking a court order for the information (mentioned above) and make a big stink about this outrageous news.  

Let me add another important point. THIS CLEARLY adds to the overwhelming case for a special counsel, as this not only creates the impression of a conflict of interest but a conflict of interest in fact.  The Biden administration cannot be relied on to truthfully explain itself.  The standard for appointing a special counsel — a qualified lawyer from outside the government — has been met, again!

When asked if he thinks the White House and special counsel were coordinating, Rudy Giuliani told the Post: “You’re damn right I do.”

“What’s happening is they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a state police. It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden state police.”

Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley of George Washington University told the outlet that the March meeting was particularly troublesome and “raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel.“

“There is no reason why the Justice Department should not be able to confirm whether this meeting was related to the ongoing investigation or concerns some other matter,” said Turley.

We’re sure the DOJ will get right on prosecuting itself.

Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Public substack,

From North America to Australia to Europe, elites seek censorship, privacy invasions, and the prosecution of wrongthink as “pre-crime”…

The leaders of nations, representatives of international organizations, and philanthropists say they are committed to creating free and open societies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook has independent fact-checkers, is open to all perspectives, and doesn’t interfere in elections. And, in response to questions from a colleague at Public, a representative from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations insisted the philanthropy supported free speech.

“In response to your effort to conflate any attempt to address hate speech as a frontal assault on free speech itself,” the Soros spokesperson said, “perhaps the words of the UN Secretary-General will help in illuminating a crucial distinction: ‘Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech.’”

But these words are a thin veil covering an aggressive attack on freedom of speech around the world, from Australia to North America to Europe, where the Digital Services Act, which demands Internet companies “Address any risk they pose on society, including public health, physical and mental well-being,” goes into effect today.

A blockbuster new investigation by Australia’s Sky News discovered that Meta-Facebook has been paying activists to serve as neutral fact-checkers while, in reality, using their power to censor their political enemies.

The context is that this fall, Australians will vote in a special national election, the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, on whether to give special political powers to native peoples. Facebook is funding those in favor of the referendum to censor its opponents. “An audit of RMIT Voice fact checks showed the 17 Voice checks between May 3 and June 23 this year were all targeting anti-Voice opinions or views,” Sky News Found.

Meta allowed the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) to censor disfavored views even while “knowing it was a breach of the rules Zuckerberg established to distance himself from fact-checking responsibilities,” reported SkyNews.

The RMIT, which is a respected technical university like America’s MIT,  “used the powers Facebook has given it to throttle Sky News Australia’s Facebook page with false fact checks multiple times this year, breaching the Meta-endorsed IFCN Code of Principles and preventing millions of Australians from reading or watching Sky News Australia’s journalism.”

How did the fact-checkers abuse their powers? By smearing their political enemies as racists.

“Fact-checkers employed by RMIT have led to numerous code breaches,” reports Sky News, “including one fact-checker using her social media account to label Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a fear-mongering racist for his views on the Voice.”

As for Soros’ Open Society Foundations, its spokesperson cleverly tucked a call for expanded censorship into her response to our queries.

After saying, “Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech,” the spokesperson said, “It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence, which is prohibited under international law” [emphasis added]. 

“Keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous” is precisely the justification for censorship that politicians in Ireland and Scotland are making to be able to invade people’s homes and confiscate their phones and computers, as Irish reporter Ben Scallan described yesterday.

Consider the twisted logic. Irish police must invade people’s homes in order to make sure that their hate materials don’t escalate into something that could be illegal. That’s a totalitarian move toward the police enforcing “precrime,” as depicted in the terrifying science fiction thriller Minority Report.

Meanwhile, the UN is now building a “digital army” of censorship activists around the world to wage war on wrongthink, or what it calls “deadly disinformation.” According to the UN, “misinformation” is “deadly” and poses an “existential” threat. The UN’s effort matches the WHO effort, which views speech it disagrees with as a kind of pathogen.

In Germany, a court ordered the American writer C.J. Hopkins to either go to jail or pay 3,600 Euros for comparing the COVID lockdowns to the Nazis.

The government claimed Hopkins was promoting Nazism when, obviously, he doing the opposite. While some may take offense at the comparison, it makes clear that Hopkins has a negative, not positive, view of Nazism.

In the United States, a nonprofit organization called Center for Countering Digital Hate, whose former communications director worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, has successfully led a boycott against X, formerly named Twitter, for not being more censorious.

As a result, advertising revenue to X is down 60 – 70%, according to news reports.

In short, Western elites, both governmental, corporate, and philanthropic, are embracing the kinds of totalitarian tactics made famous by the East German Stasi, the Chinese government, and dystopian regimes depicted in movies like Minority Report. Why is that? And how can we fight back?

*  *  *

We are nearing the end of the beginning of our movement, which has involved ripping away the mask hiding the real agenda of the world’s censorious elites. The leaders of nations, representatives of international organizations, including the United Nations, and philanthropists who say they are committed to creating free and open societies are, in reality, not. Rather, they are interfering in elections and violating both the First Amendment and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. We can stop them, but we’re going to need your help.

Please subscribe now to support Public’s defense of free speech worldwide.

Having already been hit by backlash from red-state officials over its embrace of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda, BlackRock is now under criticism from Democratic officials alarmed that the giant asset manager has decreased its votes in favor of ESG shareholder proposals. 

Last week, the Financial Times reported that BlackRock voted for only 26 ESG proposals in the 12-month period ending in June — or 7% of the total opportunities. That marks the continuation of a steep decline that’s seen BlackRock’s percent of “yes” votes on such proposals plummet from 47% in 2021. 

That trend has angered leftists, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. In a textbook example of projection, Lander tells FT that BlackRock has caved to a “misinformed and shortsighted war against ESG at the behest of special interests.”   

“BlackRock has a responsibility to use its votes to send a clear and consistent message regarding the need to manage climate-related and human-capital related risks,” said Lander, who oversees $250 billion in pension assets. 

BlackRock’s declining percentage of “yes” votes comes as the quantity of ESG proposals has surged thanks to new SEC rules that make it easier for shareholders to get them on the proxy ballots. On Wednesday, BlackRock said it’s voting “no” more often “because so many shareholder proposals were overreaching, lacking economic merit, or simply redundant.” 

Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs is watching with unease, telling FT, “We understand that there are years where there are lower-quality proposals, but if this becomes a trend over multiple years, then we’ll be concerned.” State Street’s frequency of backing ESG measures has also declined, but not as sharply as BlackRock’s. 

BlackRock has faced intense criticism from Republican government officials who accuse the firm of violating its fiduciary duty by putting the ESG agenda ahead of investment returns.  

In June, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that, while the $9.4 trillion asset manager hasn’t changed its thinking about ESG, he himself has stopped using that term. “I don’t use the word ESG any more, because it’s been entirely weaponized … by the far left and weaponized by the far right,” Fink said at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

BlackRock has rolled out a program called “Voting Choice” that lets investors decide how their shares should be voted. The program started with large institutional investors and the firm is now conducting a pilot of the concept with retail investors in UK pooled funds. Some observers say the program is a ruse that will do little to decrease BlackRock’s power over shareholder vote outcomes. 

The alternating backlash against BlackRock from right and left echoes the experiences of woke businesses like Bud Light and Target that reach too far left, cause an uproar on the right, modify their approach, only to faced scorn from the left for “caving” to the unenlightened.  

Of course, unlike Bud Light and Target, BlackRock and other money management titans wield enormous direct power on other public corporations and therefore society as a whole. Between the three of them, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street typically between 15 and 20% of the outstanding shares of S&P 500 companies. 

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time,

Life is full of hidden taxes. Governments, banks, and businesses all benefit from taking advantage of us by shifting costs and then nibbling away at us. This often occurs when we are distracted by a larger attack on us coming from another direction. All this should be considered part of a larger ruse, or ploy to mask how we are being weakened by a thousand cuts. Such schemes promote the idea these “little” penalties and taxes upon us are minor tolls that must be paid for society to function rather than a theft fostered upon us. 

Of course, this is becoming much easier as we move towards a cashless society where systems allow people to pay bills without even looking at them. In general, most people have come to accept a little pilfering here and there as normal. Fighting such incursions into our lives usually fails and many people deem the effort more trouble than it is worth.

No matter how much we rile at the failure of our institutions and governments, the biggest problem we face is things will most likely get far worse. Many of the trends that are developing indicate that society is having a very difficult time adjusting to the rapid rate of change taking place. This can be seen in the large number of people that are being left behind. 

While many people have been lifted out of poverty we have also witnessed a growing percentage of the population with both physical and mental ailments. These “disabilities.” often take the form of  things such as addiction, alcoholism, and eating disorders. The demographic picture unfolding across the world combined with huge government deficits does not bode well for future growth. When you mix these dysfunctional people into the demographic soup it becomes downright ugly. 

We should expect more and more of our resources to be funneled into this deep hole created by horrible policies that weaken rather than strengthen society. Obamacare failed to achieve its goals of lowering the cost of healthcare but it is now accepted as the law of the land. Open borders benefit the immigrants flowing into our country far more than the average citizen, but it is allowed. Big companies are given huge advantages over the small businesses lining Main Street and few people care, it is just another small “tax” on the way we live. What people don’t understand is that over time this has a drastic effect on the economy.

Too much of the world, too much of what we see, too much of what we are told is a lie and that is a fact. The small hidden taxes on this and that almost guarantee that further declines in both society and the financial system are likely. We are constantly bombarded with charts showing where things are going based on historical references but a question we must ask is just how relevant today’s comparisons are with prior economic cycles. Changes in how the economy is structured do not take place overnight. This does not mean it will be worse, just different. 

Real growth and productivity are generally a direct result of private enterprise being able to move forward without barriers from the government constantly impeding progress. Increased productivity is a huge factor contributing to real growth. Sadly, it is becoming apparent that qualitative easing failed to bring much growth. Easy money was an experiment that did not fulfill its promise. The side effects of unlimited and false liquidity have proven toxic. They include bigger government, more regulation, less productivity, and malinvestment of capital.

The term trueflation merits a great deal more attention than it gets, how the government arrives at these numbers matter. Inflation is viewed on a year-over-year basis, which means as the higher months drop away the numbers tend to give the impression we have it on the run. This should not be seen as prices now going back to “normal” but rather that they are not moving up as fast. Unfortunately, this method of computing inflation creates a “base effect” on inflation rates setting them up for another wave higher. Inflation is not gone and this means long-term investment in government bonds remains problematic.

It is important to note that a fundamental change has occurred in the economy related to productivity. The hidden tax resulting from the acceptance of continued incompetence is no longer an exception, it is the rule. AI and all the newfangled improvements be damned, many things no-longer work and productivity is falling. Government regulation is monkey-hammering businesses, especially small businesses. High wages kill small businesses that can’t afford to automate. Many small businesses are being forced to cut hours and staffing until they simply go out of existence. If you want you can declare this the plan of a government seeking to control everything and everyone.

President Joe Biden on Friday told reporters that he’s planning to request more money from Congress to develop a new coronavirus vaccine.

“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is ne- — necessary — that works,” the official White House transcript reads.

“Tentatively, it is recommended that — it will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.“

Biden:
“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for NEW VACCINE…Tentatively it is recommended, it would likely be recommended, everybody get it… whether they got before or not” 🤡pic.twitter.com/7l3Mgr6bV5

— أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) August 26, 2023

The announcement follows a recorded rise in Covid-19 cases in some regions, which has been accompanied by the return of mask mandates and cancelled classes by some colleges and businesses.

New vaccines containing the version of the omicron strain XBB.1.5 are already being developed by Pfizer, Novavax and Moderna. However, the virus’s continuing mutation will likely necessitate updated vaccines.

The Biden administration’s supplemental funding request for Congress for the start of the new fiscal year did not include COVID-19 vaccinations. Instead, the White House asked for roughly $40 billion to fund short-term key priorities such as more aide for Ukraine, federal disaster funds, climate change and border priorities. –The Hill

Maybe this time it will actually be safe and effective? 

COVID tyrants destroyed an entire generation of children because these fanatics were scared of the flu & wanted to rig voting laws for the 2020 election:

“Post-COVID, American children are still missing far too much school

The pandemic seems to have permanently increased… https://t.co/hlqiJ8DfYl pic.twitter.com/73oyr2EBuX

— Prodigal (@ProdigalThe3rd) August 27, 2023

The largest newspaper publisher in the United States, Gannett Co., is being sued for discriminating against white workers in their efforts to ‘diversify’ newsrooms.

The proposed class action was filed in West Virginia federal court on Friday by five current and former Gannett employees who say they were either fired or passed over for promotions for ‘less-qualified women and minorities.’

According to the Free Beacon, the root of the discrimination stems from a 2020 announcement under which the company aims to reshape its newsrooms to reflect the demographics of the communities they cover by 2025 – as well as tying executive bonuses and promotions to achieving that goal.

“Gannett executed their reverse race discrimination policy with a callous indifference towards civil rights laws or the welfare of the workers, and prospective workers, whose lives would be upended by it,” according to the plaintiffs.

Gannet defended itself, with chief legal counsel Poly Grunfeld Sack saying in a statement: “We will vigorously defend our practice of ensuring equal opportunities for all our valued employees against this meritless lawsuit.”

The lawsuit comes amid growing backlash to increasingly prevalent corporate diversity policies. Unlike other pending cases brought by conservative groups, the claims against Gannett were filed directly by the company’s employees.

The Washington Free Beacon reported last month that discriminatory fellowships and programs, which companies often establish on the basis of elite law firms’ “civil rights” advice, are now prime targets for legal scrutiny since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions in June.

These programs “are lawsuits waiting to happen,” Noah Peters, the former solicitor of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, told the Free Beacon. -Free Beacon

Gannet joins a growing list of institutions and businesses facing lawsuits for reverse-discrimination, including law schools, Starbucks, Target, and Progressive Insurance company. More than a dozen complaints have been filed with a federal anti-bias agency by a group founded by former Trump administration officials.

Meanwhile, a group formed by conservative activist Edward Blum, who spearheaded the Supreme Court case that ended affirmative action, sued two major US law firms over fellowships offered only to non-whites and LGBT individuals.

In the Gannett case, plaintiff Steven Bradley says he was fired from a management job at the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper in Rochester, New York – and then subsequently passed over for a different position within Gannett due to the color of his skin. In April, Bradley filed a similar lawsuit in New York state court.

Another plaintiff, Logan Berry, says he was passed over for a promotion at the Progress-Index in Petersburg, VA. After Gannett acquired the paper in 2019, Berry says the news giant gave the job to a less qualified black woman in violation of a federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in contracts.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

This is how bubbles collapse: the “vital few” 4% sell at whatever the market will bear, pushing prices down, and the 64% awaken to the rapidly narrowing window for locking in bubble capital gains.

Here’s how we can tell if a speculative bubble is a bubble: everyone says it isn’t a bubble – the market has reached a “permanently high plateau” because valuations are now fairly priced, etc.

Housing globally is in a bubble (See chart below) which we’re constantly assured isn’t a bubble. As I discussed yesterday ( The Problem Isn’t a Housing Shortage, It’s the Concentration of Ownership by the Wealthy), this bubble is fundamentally an artifact of central bank and government policies that enrich the already-rich, who were incentivized to outbid each other with low-cost credit to snap up “investment properties” with their “surplus capital” that generate more income and capital gains that cash, which until recently was “trash” due to near-zero savings yields.

Many wealthy families collect multiple properties via inheritance, as second (vacation) homes or as long-term rentals. This hoarding is (as I explained) the only possible result of policies that asymmetrically distribute credit, and thus income and capital gains, to the already-wealthy rather than to the not-yet-wealthy. This policy-driven hoarding / concentration of housing in the top 10% is one factor driving rents higher due to artificial scarcity–a scarcity created by central bank and government policies, not the “market.”

(Regulations and bureaucratic friction that push the cost of new constriction to the moon are another factor, but that’s a topic for another post. I also want to stipulate that I am not talking about people of modest means who acquired rental properties by scrimping and saving their earned income and making sacrifices for decades–a strategy that is part of Self-Reliance; I’m talking about the already-wealthy who are seeking to “maximize returns” on their unearned “surplus capital.”)

A systemic driver of this bidding war for rental properties is the “AirBnB” model of monetizing individual properties to compete with hotels and resorts for lodging. This model is called short-term vacation rentals (STVR), and the already-rich have been pouring their wealth into STVRs for the past 15 years.

This has led to an artificial scarcity of housing in popular tourist destinations. It’s not uncommon to visit tourist-magnet cities and see entire buildings with only a few lights on, as many units are owned by the wealthy and left empty, as rents are not as important as having a safe place to “park surplus capital.” Thousands of other units have been pulled from the long-term rental market to reap the higher returns of STVRs.

Many cities and locales are finally pushing back against the housing hoarding of the global wealthy, taxing empty units and limiting and/or licensing STVRs.

As I explained yesterday, the flood of post-pandemic price-insensitive “revenge spending” pushed tourist lodging rates to the moon as resorts and STVRs competed on exploiting price-insensitive tourists.

What’s often forgotten about real estate is prices are set on the margin. The Pareto Distribution is a handy tool for understanding how an entire neighborhood’s home prices are re-set by a mere handful of sales.

The Pareto Distribution is often summarized as the 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 rule can be distilled down to 80% of 80% and 20% of 20% to the 64/4 Rule: the “vital few” 4% exert outsized influence over the 64% mass. So 4% of sales can re-set the valuation of 64% of all neighboring houses.

So 40 houses selling for around $450,000 will re-set the valuation of 1,000 nearby homes from $800,000 to $450,000. This is why an apparently modest number of fire sales of money-losing STVRs will dissolve the floor under bubble valuations.

The STVR bubble was entirely an artifact of 1) historically absurdly low mortgage rates and 2) post-pandemic price-insensitive “revenge spending”. Both are over. There is no way the bottom 90% can afford homes at today’s bubble valuations, so the pool of buyers is limited to the top 10% already-wealthy, whose appetite for owning “surplus capital” rentals vanishes once the lofty weekly rates and low vacancies reverse into high vacancies and collapsing rental rates.

The bottom 90% have tapped out their pandemic windfalls and their lines of credit. The erosion of the global economy will deflate bonuses, capital gains and all the other sources of the top 10% “wealth effect,” and credit will tighten as risk aversion and higher rates turn the spigot of easy credit off for the already-wealthy.

The collapse of the STVR bubble will topple a line of dominoes as corporate owners will awaken from their fantasies and realize they better sell now to lock in their gains before they vanish. Wealthy households who “land-banked” properties for capital gains and places to park “surplus capital” will also awaken to the the need to lock in gains by selling.

This is how bubbles collapse: the “vital few” 4% sell at whatever the market will bear, pushing prices down, and the 64% awaken to the rapidly narrowing window for locking in bubble capital gains. This rush for the exits triggers a strike in buyers, who realize there is no way to know how low valuations will fall, and so waiting for a bottom makes much more sense that playing “catch the knife,” i.e. buying as a bubble deflates, hoping you don’t get burned by prices falling after overpaying.

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