It will hardly come as a surprise to readers, and indeed anyone, that San Francisco, plagued with shit-covered streets, a drug and homelessness crisis, out-of-control violent crime, and a commercial real estate downturn, has ranked as the worst-run city in the country, according to a new study by personal finance website WalletHub. 

WalletHub researchers analyzed 149 cities via a “quality of services” score. They were able to find the score by using 36 metrics, like high school graduation rates, public hospital system quality, and crime rates, condensing those metrics into six categories, which were then measured against the city’s per-capita budget. 

San Francisco scored 149 out of 149 cities. Across the six key categories, the city ranked 92 in the economy, 65 in safety, and 49 in financial stability. Even though the city ranked last on the overall list, there were some bright spots, number two in health and 12 in health. 

Ranking last on WalletHub’s list comes as no surprise. Progressive city leadership under Mayor London Breed is running an ‘unsustainable’ budget deficit while the local economy falters. A commercial real estate crisis is unfolding in the downtown area as building owners are defaulting on properties. Crime is out of control, forcing businesses to flee. And Democrats who control the town appear to have no interest in enforcing law and order. 

Wild Video from Oakland California sideshow street Takeover last night

(@ppv_tahoe) Video footage was filmed on the 100 block of 10th street overnight.#oakland #sideshow #california
📸 _okpatrick pic.twitter.com/Nc6laXxTEB

— PPV-TAHOE – News Journalist (@ppv_tahoe) May 6, 2023

And it seems like almost overnight. Democrats have transformed a once thriving city into a hellhole riddled with crime and drugs. Failed policies and no accountability from lawmakers are disgusting. Voters can save their city by voting in the next mayoral election in November 2024. But quite honestly, the city might not recover for years. It’s time to consider moving to an area where living expenses and crime are much lower. 

Authored by Jonathan Pidluzny via Real Clear Education,

The Supreme Court is likely to strike down the Biden Administration’s borrower bailout in the coming weeks.

The administration’s plan to transfer up to $20,000 in student loan debt per borrower – from individuals who voluntarily took out loans to finance their college education to unsuspecting taxpayers – is one of the most audacious examples of executive overreach in American history.

Despite its $400 billion price tag, the action is only a small piece of the administration’s strategy to create a massive new public subsidy for higher education. A cynic might wonder whether the headline-grabbing but legally dubious bailout now before the Court was conceived as a decoy to distract public attention from the real centerpiece of the debt-transfer agenda.

With public attention focused on the blanket forgiveness plan (and the pleas of those demanding more), the Department of Education was busy crafting an ambitious plan to bail out future borrowers in perpetuity by changing the rules governing income-driven repayment.

Currently, multiple income-based repayment programs exist. All would cap the payments of enrollees at a percentage of their current income and then wipe away debt that remains after many years of repayment. When income-based repayment plans are designed properly, they align the timing of repayment with career earnings trajectory, such that borrowers pay the loans back faster as their incomes increase. (It is reasonable for doctors with very large loans to have smaller payments in their residency years when salaries are modest).

But the design principle should be that most loans are eventually paid off, including interest, except in cases of manifest hardship.

With its proposal to phase out several existing income-based repayment programs in favor of a much more generous version of a specific program called REPAYE (Revised Pay as You Earn), the Department of Education is abandoning this expectation to create an ongoing bailout.

REPAYE’s extravagant new terms are a bad deal for taxpayers. Undergraduate borrowers will be required to pay only 5% of their disposable income toward their student loan debt, with disposable income defined as income above 225% of the federal poverty line ($32,805 for an individual or $67,500 for a family of four). Balances will not grow when a borrower’s monthly payment is smaller than the interest accrued. (To accomplish this benefit, the Secretary of Education claims the power to cease charging interest owed to the U.S. Treasury.)

Outstanding balances will be forgiven under the program after 10 to 20 years depending on the size of the original balance. Forever.

The program will subsidize college attendance for borrowers across income levels. According to Department estimates, borrowers in the lowest 20% of lifetime earners will see the cost of college discounted by 90% relative to the status quo.

This means that on average, they will repay $873 for each $10,000 borrowed prior to the cancellation of the remaining principal. Borrowers in the second lifetime-income quintile will receive a 65% discount on the cost of college, and borrowers in the third and fourth income quintiles will receive 37% and 13% discounts, respectively. The Urban Institute estimates that under proposed changes to REPAYE, only 22% of those who complete a bachelor’s degree with typical levels of debt will repay their debt entirely (49% will repay less than half).

Concretely, a household of four earning $80,000 per year with $30,000 in student loan debt would be expected to pay approximately $291 per month under the current version of REPAYE. Under the new rule, that payment would drop to just $52 per month.

Of course, the debt does not disappear when the balance is ultimately canceled. It gets transferred onto the backs of taxpayers. In effect, the Department of Education is in the process of creating a new, permanent, social-welfare program that disproportionately benefits the highly educated—all without congressional authorization or appropriation.

If the program goes into effect, American taxpayers will be on the hook for a much larger proportion of higher education expenditures nationwide. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the action will cost $230 billion over the next decade, assuming the Supreme Court allows the first bailout to proceed. If it does not, much of the loan debt that would have been forgiven this year will be canceled in years to come under the Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) rule’s provisions.

The CBO estimate also does not fully account for the inflationary impact of the stealth bailout proposal. Research has shown that when the pool of financing available to students increases, colleges find it easier to raise tuition rates (they often “invest” in luxury facilities and armies of DEI administrators and pass the costs on to students and taxpayers). Families with the wherewithal to pay for college out of pocket will instead choose to borrow in order to access the potential subsidy. Who can blame them when government policy creates an incentive to leave their money in the stock market and use investment gains to pay down the loan at a discount in the decade following graduation?

Because the new program would artificially cap repayment below the cost of college for most borrowers, students will also have an incentive to overspend on college, comfortable in the knowledge that REPAYE’s cancellation provision effectively sets a repayment ceiling. Similarly, underprepared students will be recruited to enroll with the promise that their loans will be forgiven if they do not complete their degrees and secure remunerative employment. This destroys individual incentives to be budget-conscious and attentive to price when selecting an institution and area of study. In short, the regulation will drive up the cost of college in myriad ways and, with it, taxpayer-funded higher education spending.  

All of which is to say that when the Supreme Court issues its judgment in Biden v. Nebraska later this month, the debate about student loan forgiveness will not be over. The coming IDR reforms are even more radical than blanket forgiveness—and very likely to provoke additional legal challenges and congressional scrutiny in the years ahead.

A new analysis of data provided by Higher Ed Dive has revealed that since 2016, 91 separate private colleges have closed, merged with another school or announced plans to close.

The trend was helped along by the onset of Covid and the ensuing reaction that the country had to the virus. As CNBC reports, colleges that were already struggling heading into the pandemic found that lockdowns were the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”. 

Robert Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review, told CNBC: “There are two significant issues affecting higher education right now, specifically, through the admission and enrollment offices.” 

He continued: “Number one, it is the admission cliff, and that is the impending decline [in the number of prospective students]. We’ll be graduating our lowest high school classes by population in 2025. And most enrollment professionals have been wringing their hands about this date of 2025, but many schools have seen those enrollment declines already.”

Roughly 95% of U.S,. colleges are reliant on tuition and funding from students to operate (others are reliant on things like public funding and/or endowments to help fund their operations). 

Fitch Ratings Senior Director Emily Wadhwani added: “It’s a reflection of, I think, an unsustainable operating platform, meaning a heavy reliance on tuition, which can’t always keep up with inflation [or] with erosion in enrollment.”

Wadhwani said that schools “can’t keep hiking tuition sticker price in the hopes that the net residual once you account for scholarship and discounting and the like is going to be enough to offset your growing expense base.”

A video report provided by CNBC.com went into further depth on the issue, noting, in the case of colleges like Lincoln College, that cyberattacks also played a role in closures. The video profiled that 68% of for-profit schools also closed due to an enrollment cliff, due to simply “less people being born” during the generation of what would be new college students.

The video also looked at The King’s College, which announced it needed $2.6 million before warning students that it would have to close and they would have to begin looking elsewhere. They provided potential transfer schools to their student base, which is located in New York City.  

Finally, the video focuses on how enrollment driving finances “is a given” for colleges. 

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

COVID-19 has resurged in mainland China with the number of people testing positive for the virus rising significantly since April.

This follows mass infections and deaths from last December to January.

A Pudong, Shanghai resident told The Epoch Times on June 21 that his father recently developed white lungs from a COVID-19 infection and died.

Others reported COVID-19-related illness, deaths, and reinfections among family members.

Dr. Bai of Beijing Anzhen Hospital posted on Chinese social media that he had been reinfected with COVID-19, and the department director had also been infected and was suffering severe symptoms. They were both infected by patients.

In the southeastern city of Fuzhou, “the new wave of infections has been very serious in the past month or so,” A. Liang, a Fuzhou resident, told The Epoch Times.

Many people around him were infected.

“Although the symptoms are not as severe as the first wave, it’s very contagious,” he said.

A man wears a face shield as he assists a loved one on a stretcher in the hallway of a busy hospital in Shanghai, China on Jan. 14, 2023. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Li Yu (pseudonym), a doctor in Jiamusi City of northeastern province Heilongjiang, told The Epoch Times that “there are a lot of people being reinfected with COVID-19 and hospitalized. Some elderly people died after being infected.”

Wang Yi (pseudonym) from Nantong, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, was infected with the virus for the first time.

She told The Epoch Times that her symptoms were severe, and she hadn’t recovered after more than 20 days. “I don’t know how I got infected,” she said.

Wang said that she started having headaches, bone pain, and body pain on May 25 and tested positive in the hospital the next day. Then she started to have a fever, sweating, insomnia, and diarrhea until she collapsed.

After being infected for 18 days, she had difficulty breathing.

Ms. Liao from Suzhou city in Jiangsu Province told The Epoch Times that she tested positive on June 12 in a hospital and has been suffering from severe symptoms, such as fever, dizziness, and nausea, and then developed pneumonia.

“Many COVID-19 patients are having intravenous treatment in the hospital,” she said. “This virus is terrifying, it is an invisible killer, and people are having lingering symptoms and sequelae after being infected.”

Dr. Yu at Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine posted an article online that stated the number of patients visiting fever clinics across the country has increased.

Patients with low immunity, older age, or serious underlying diseases are more likely to be infected and develop pneumonia, he said.

China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued an update on COVID-19 infection numbers in May on June 11, with 2,777 severe cases and 164 deaths. All the cases were caused by Omicron mutant strains, with the top three being XBB.1.9, XBB.1.16, and XBB.1.5.

The Chinese communist regime has consistently concealed the true scale of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. It’s unclear how many people have been infected in the new outbreak.

Zhong Nanshan, the communist regime’s top health advisor, predicted that there might be a peak of infections at the end of June, with as many as 65 million people infected weekly.

New York has fallen a lot since the onset of the covid plandemic. It’s about to fall even more.

The cash-strapped city, which has seen an exodus of disgruntled residents head to Florida and other less-deadly and tax-burdened pastures, may soon have a casino.

According to Bloomberg, real estate giant Silverstein Properties is pitching a casino project on the far west side of Manhattan, joining a handful of developers vying for one of three downstate gaming licenses.

The New York-based developer, best known for his towers at the World Trade Center site, is teaming up with Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment to submit a proposal for the Avenir, a 1.8 million square foot (167,200 square meter) project that consists of a casino as well as a hotel and residences, according to a statement Friday.

The proposed casino would be built on undeveloped land at 41st Street and 11th Avenue, north of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, at a site which is currently fully-owned by Silverstein.

“Our city and state face a confluence of historic challenges right now,” Larry Silverstein, chairman of Silverstein Properties, said in the statement. “We need to work with state and local leaders to do everything we can to make New York the best place to live, work and visit. We’ve done it before, and I am confident we can do it again.”

It was not immediately clear how slapping a casino in the middle of the west side, not far from the Hudson dockyards where recently every hedge fund has migrated to, will help make New York “the best place to live” but we are confident generously bribed New York bureaucrats will come up with an answer.

The project would include two 46-story towers connected by a public sky bridge and an eight-story gaming, entertainment and restaurant complex at the base. Plans also call for 1,000 luxury hotel rooms and more than 100 units of affordable housing.

Silverstein will be competing against pitches from other developers including SL Green Realty Corp. and even hedge fund manager Steve Cohen for a lucrative license to build a casino in New York City. State officials haven’t set a deadline yet for the submission of bids.

SL Green has also pitched a casino in Times Square, while Related Cos. proposed anchoring the second phase of its $25 billion Hudson Yards project with a gaming and entertainment complex.

One can only hope that by the time the casinos are built, there are still be a handful of wealthy New Yorkers who haven’t split for Florida.

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

India’s government this week asked some of the biggest state oil refiners to launch rights issues with which the authorities plan to help fund the firms’ net-zero and energy transition goals, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting sources with knowledge of the matter.

The government will be seeking equity in Indian Oil Corp and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) via rights issues, and has asked Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) to issue preferential shares to the government. In exchange for the equity in the refiners, India plans to support their goals to achieve net-zero operational emissions in the 2040s.

Indian Oil, BPCL, and HPCL are looking to invest a combined up to $48.8 billion (4 trillion Indian rupees) to reach their net zero-emissions goals by 2040, Reuters’ sources said.     

Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner and fuel retailer, said earlier this year it would consolidate all its green energy businesses into a wholly-owned unit with the purpose of boosting its clean energy division.  

The government aims to complete the multi-billion-dollar process for the rights and preferential issues by October this year, according to Reuters’ sources.

Earlier this year, India announced a $3.67 billion (300 billion rupees) support to state oil refiners to help them boost green energy projects and meet emission reduction targets. In the 2023/2024 budget, India also announced it would support battery storage systems.

India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter after China and the U.S., has a net-zero target set for 2070, twenty years later than the 2050 target of most developed economies including the U.S.  

Meanwhile, Indian state-held oil and gas explorer, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), the biggest oil and gas producer in the country, said last month it aims to boost its renewable energy portfolio and plans $12 billion in investment in green projects.

ONGC looks to have as much as 10,000 megawatts, or 10 GW, in its portfolio of operations by 2030, up from just 189 MW at the end of March, ONGC’s chairman Arun Kumar Singh said.    

Update(1815ET): There are now widespread reports and circulating footage of additional armored vehicles deployed by military police units in key parts of Russia, including in Moscow and Rostov regions, with TASS saying they have been ordered to protect government buildings, as speculation that Wagner’s Prigozhin is making real moves against Russian leadership tonight. 

The Washington Post is meanwhile recapping the following of reports that authorities are seeking his arrest:

Russia’s Federal Security Service late Friday announced a criminal case against Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, accusing him of “incitement to armed rebellion” after he declared an open conflict with Russia’s military leadership and called on Russians to join 25,000 Wagner fighters against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top commanders.

Footage like the below is widely circulating as beefed up military security deployments have been observed in various places:

Armoured vehicles reported on streets of Moscow https://t.co/0zT2NxXx1l pic.twitter.com/UuwfNBqhsz

— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) June 23, 2023

BREAKING: Russia on high alert, military vehicles reportedly deployed in Rostov-on-Don pic.twitter.com/NjpO4ceTHy

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) June 23, 2023

Russian media has confirmed–

“Security measures have been strengthened in Moscow, all the most important facilities, state authorities and transport infrastructure facilities have been taken under enhanced protection,” law enforcement agencies told TASS.

Locals in Moscow publish lots of clips of military equipment on the roads. pic.twitter.com/wTXIsvWsbz

— Mike (@Doranimated) June 23, 2023

There are claims circulating that the FSB is even calling on Wagner Group’s own fighters to arrest Prigozhin and bring him in to authorities. 

An FSB statement has urged Wagner forces to no longer follow his orders.

BREAKING: Russia’s FSB intelligence agency says statements by Wagner Group’s Prigozhin are calls for the start of an armed civil conflict in the country

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) June 23, 2023

* * *

Update(1641ET): After months of unchecked, ultra-provocative statements from Prigozhin aimed at both top military commanders as well as Kremlin decision-makers, it seems the Wagner chief may have finally crossed Putin’s lines. It’s being reported in Russian state sources that the Russian president has been briefed on the earlier audio tirade made by Prigozhin, which essentially declared war on the defense ministry. The Wagner statement had been circulated widely after it was posted on Telegram late at night local time.

And now Prigozhin finally appears to be in hot water, under formal investigation for mutiny, per the statement in TASS:  

Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee on Friday demanded that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, stop unlawful actions and said the Russian Federal Security Service started a mutiny investigation in connection with his recent statements.

“The statements that are being spread on behalf of Yevgeny Prigozhin are absolutely unfounded. In connection with these statements, the Federal Security Service of Russia has started an investigation into a call for an armed mutiny. We demand that unlawful actions be stopped immediately,” the committee said in a statement.

He’s now saying the audio remarks were merely a call to justice and “march for justice”, denying it is a coup attempt targeting military leadership – so there may be a Wagner attempt underway to walk back the comments.

No, this is not likely to turn into a civil war. It is what in Russia is called ‘razborki’ (gangland warfare)

And it looks like one gang is about to get totally crushed because the other has all the weapons and the security services on their side https://t.co/ZiiiwNm7BK

— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) June 23, 2023

Earlier in the day, hours before the remarks saying the country’s military leadership “must be stopped” – Prigozhin had in a surprising turn gone after the very decision to go to war in the first place. 

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc,” Prigozhin had said via his press service in words widely reported also in the West. “The Russian Defense Ministry is deceiving the public and the president.” 

This latter part of Friday’s angry denunciations may prove to finally be Prigozhin’s downfall. There are now unverified reports that Moscow is taking extra measures to strengthen security and that the FSB is on high alert.

SECURITY SERVICES IN MOSCOW PUT ON HIGH ALERT: BBC

As for what happens next, at the very least the Kremlin will want to do something concerning the ongoing embarrassment and scandal, reflected in Western media headlines, which can present a narrative of a fracturing of Russian forces…

BREAKING: The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group appears to be threatening an armed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership. https://t.co/S2g5wOhKGh

— ABC News (@ABC) June 23, 2023

* * *

There are breaking reports that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has finally completely broken off relations with the Russian military, and essentially “declared war” on the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

According to a prominent translator who has examined freshly released audio of Prigozhin’s fiery message on Telegram, the Wagner leader begins with: “PMC Wagner Commanders’ Council made a decision: the evil brought by the military leadership of the country must be stopped. They neglect the lives of soldiers. They forgot the word “justice”, and we will bring it back.”

Audio. pic.twitter.com/hnuu42JhmY

— Dmitri (@wartranslated) June 23, 2023

It comes amid unverified reports that the regular military launched an attack on a Wagner encampment after months of soaring tensions, which the Russian MoD has just denied.

All of this has quickly given way to reports from the region that Prigozhin is ready to lead a full-on “coup” against top leadership, military brass in particular.

The translation of the Wagner founder’s words continue as follows: 

Those, who destroyed today our guys, who destroyed tens, tens of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers will be punished. I’m asking: no one resist. Everyone who will try to resist, we will consider them a danger and destroy them immediately, including any checkpoints on our way. And any aviation that we see above our heads.

I’m asking everyone to remain calm, do not succumb to provocations, and remain in their houses. Ideally, those along our way, do not go outside. After we finished what we started, we will return to the frontline to protect our motherland.

⚡️Prigozhin accuses Russian army of attacking Wagner, threatens to respond.

Wagner Group Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said Russian Defense Ministry attacked the group’s bases in the rear.

“We have 25,000 (soldiers), and we’re going to respond,” he said. https://t.co/1xk7oeGQBK

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 23, 2023

And more from Prigozhin, suggesting he could indeed have his sights set on an actual political coup:

Presidential authority, Government, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosgvardia, and other departments will continue operating as before. We will deal with those who destroy Russian soldiers. And we will return to the frontline. Justice in the Army will be restored. And after this, justice for the whole of Russia.”

One question remains after this: how long will he last? 

Below is FT’s Moscow bureau chief on the shocking declaration…

We published this story about what Prigozhin accused the Russian MOD of this morning 40 minutes ago. In that time, he has now claimed the Russian army bombed a Wagner camp and appears to have declared war on the MOD. Just pure madnesshttps://t.co/oj11forhyR

— max seddon (@maxseddon) June 23, 2023

At this point, the Wagner boss should certainly avoid staying in tall buildings and near windows.

Currently, Russian state-run RT has the following military statement pinned at the top of its homepage: Wagner chief spreads misinformation — MOD

“All messages and video distributed on social networks on behalf of [Yevgeny] Prigozhin about the alleged strike by the [Russian military] on the camps of PMC Wagner in the rear areas do not correspond to reality and are an informational provocation,” the defense ministry said in the statement.

“Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to carry out combat missions on the line of contact with the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of the special military operation,” the MoD added.

⚡️#BREAKING There are 25 thousand of us and we are going to figure out why there is chaos in the country — Prigozhin

“Everyone who wants to join. We need to end this mess.”

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 23, 2023

developing…

After initially pleading ‘not guilty’ to charges of enticement of a minor and child sexual assault in 2021, senior CNN producer John Griffin (axed by the company after his arrest) has been sentenced to 19 years in prison as well as 15 years of post-confinement supervision in a case that has only magnified the array of problems and scandals revolving around the far-left network.  

Griffin used online chat rooms to lure a mother with the promise of cash to bring her 9-year-old daughter to his ski-home in Vermont, where he sexually assaulted the child.  He was also charged with at least three other counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.  

A 10-page indictment issued by a grand jury alleges that Griffin frequently used Kik, a messaging application, and Google Hangouts to lure women with young daughters to meet him at the Vermont ski house he had bought with his wife to provide “sexual training” on how to be “submissive” to men. Griffin boasted during internet chats that he had trained girls as young as 7 years old, federal authorities said.

The child’s adoptive mother (stepmother) who brought the girl from their Nevada home to visit Griffin pleaded guilty to attempted lewdness with a child under the age of 14, attempted sexual assault and child abuse.  The woman was sentenced in April to 8-20 years in prison on each count in Nevada, court records show. The woman is also required to register as a sex offender and have lifetime supervision, court records show.  The stepmother’s name was withheld to protect the identity of the child. 

Griffin plead guilty in December to one count of a three-count indictment.  As part of a plea deal, the government dropped two remaining counts of enticement of a minor against Griffin, then 45 years old.

Griffin was employed by CNN for 8 years and boasted that he worked “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Chris Cuomo – The lead anchor that CNN ousted in 2021.  It was exposed that Chris aided his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, using his connections at CNN (including Jeff Zucker) to help his brother’s legal team after Andrew had been accused of sexual harassment. 

Beyond the organization’s dismal audience numbers, the arrest of John Griffin along with the numerous other disasters at CNN in recent years are likely the impetus for the recent shake-up at the network by Discovery CEO David Zaslav.  CNN has pursued layoffs of at least 400 employees along with the firing of CEO Chris Licht, the firing of Don Lemon and the canceling of a host of shows including Brian Stelter’s ‘Reliable Sources.’  

Authored by Jim Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“In the wake of the Hunter Biden sweetheart plea deal, calling D.C. a swamp is an insult to swamps and frankly to all wetlands in general. We need to redefine the Clean Water Act to include all Biden adjacent areas.” 

-Margot Cleveland, Lawyer and legal analyst

“I’m proud of my son” — Joe Biden

I hope you agree this has been an instructive week for our republic, sinking to the bottom as fast as the Titan submersible on its way to consort with its grandmama, the HMS Titanic.

Here’s what I learned, for instance, from Special Counsel John Durham’s visit to the House Judiciary Committee: When asked why he did not seek grand jury testimony from the primary culprits in the Russia Collusion hoax — Comey, McCabe, and Strzok — he told the room it would have been “unproductive” because they habitually claimed to “not recall” anything when testifying in Congress.

That’s an interesting legal theory.

If it is so, we must suppose that any witness in a criminal inquiry may decline testifying on the grounds of claiming a defective memory. I’m not a lawyer, of course, but is it not the case that witnesses can be prompted to recall events when presented with evidence? E.g., “…here is your smartphone text of July 29 saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll stop him [Trump].’ What means did you have in mind to accomplish that, Mr. Strzok?”

In the four-year lead-up to his personal appearance in the House, many of us were fooled into thinking Mr. Durham was a serious dude. (I sure was.) Turns out the ferocious facial hair masked a rather timorous persona. Mr. Durham apparently did not dare test the boundaries of the narrow lane laid out in the scoping directives set forth by then Attorney General Barr. Mr. D. did find a line of criminal conduct between Lawfare artist Michal Sussmann, the Fusion GPS disinfo company, the DC law firm Perkins Coie, and candidate Hillary MyTurn in the creation and marketing of the Steele Dossier — yet he never called Hillary to do any ‘splainin about it (or anything else she did in 2016). Weird, a little bit.

While his omissions and missteps were spotlighted by the Republican members, Mr. Durham was mugged, kicked to the curb, stomped, and peed-on by the committee Democrats, who still labor to prop-up the dead-letter Russia Collusion fraud against all evidence and reason. As usual, the lead attack dog on that was Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). He was rewarded the next day with a censure vote for seven years of shameless lying about said fraud, and stripped of his seat on the House Intel Committee, which he used, as then-chairman, to launch Trump Impeachment #1 in 2019 with fake “whistleblower” (and CIA goblin) Eric Ciaramella, whom Mr. Schiff naturally lied about never meeting prior to the proceeding.

We are treated in these twilight months of the “Joe Biden” regime to a cavalcade of revelations laying out the degeneracy of a federal justice system at war with the American people and its shady machinations in service to the Biden family global bribery operation. Late Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), released the affidavit of IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley from testimony given in closed session May 26. It disclosed a concerted program by the DOJ to impede, obstruct, delay, divert, and bury a massive tax evasion and fraud case against Hunter Biden, involving millions of dollars garnered from foreign persons and entities for no discernible services performed in return.

“I am alleging, with evidence…” Mr. Shapley testified under oath, “…whatever the motivations, at every stage decisions were made that had the effect of benefiting the subject of the investigation. These decisions included slow-walking investigative steps, not allowing enforcement actions to be executed, limiting investigators’ line of questioning for witnesses, misleading investigators on charging authority, delaying any and all actions months before [the 2020] elections to ensure the investigation did not go overt well before policy memorandum mandated the pause.”

Hunter Biden was code-named “Sportsman” as the case opened in 2018. Red flags in bank transfer records of Hunter B and associates involving millions of dollars triggered the IRS inquiry. It wasn’t until a year later that Hunter’s laptop turned up, crammed with deal memos of bribes paid along with vivid documentary evidence of sex and drug crimes. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID.

By the way, note that this was the exact same time that the House Intel Committee under chairman Adam Schiff commenced its impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. AG William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray therefore knew then that Hunter’s laptop existed and that it contained evidence of suspicious money transactions with Russia, China, and most particularly Ukraine — since Mr. Trump’s impeachment case was based on a telephone query he made to Ukrainian President, Zelensky, regarding the Biden family’s operations there. Neither Mr. Barr nor Mr. Wray alerted Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the evidence contained in the laptop — which would have provided exculpatory proof of a reasonable motive for Mr. Trump’s phone call. How was that not an obstruction of justice?

Mr. Shapley’s testimony is just one thread in the much larger tapestry of Biden family corruption now achieving clarity. Rep. James Comer’s Oversight Committee continues on its deep dive into the Biden family bank transfer records — with its evidence of money laundering through Biden shell company cut-outs — and the direct voice recording evidence of  “Joe Biden” discussing his family’s financial arrangements with Petro Poroshenko, then-president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, plus other damning evidence connected to a “trusted” (and well-paid) FBI human confidential source in the much fought over FD-1023 document recently surrended to the Oversight Committee.

In short, the tide is going out even as the sun sets on “Joe Biden” as President. He and his handlers may believe they enjoy the protection of a compliant news media, but even that has its limits. Impeachment is coming, even if not as fast as Rep. Lauren Boebert wants it to, and if and when it does, there will be no ignoring the stark presentation of hard evidence — no matter how much MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid snorts and cackles.

Meanwhile, please understand that “Joe Biden” is only pretending to run for reelection and his party is pretending along with him just for the present desperate moment.

Before long, their whole reeking, creaking edifice of lies and bad faith will come crashing down. Joe Biden will have to resign or the nation will be treated to the spectacle, this time, of a trial in the senate for real cause, bribery and treason, not just fake animus.

And then, not even Gavin Newsom will be able to save the Democratic Party in its present alignment and foul habits. If it survives at all, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will have to rebuild it from the ground up and expel the demons infesting it.

*  *  *

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An odd – holiday-shortened week – with hawkish actions (foreign) and words (domestic) from central bankers; weak macro data globally (US hard data outperformed but ‘soft’ survey data is completely decoupled); the yield curve collapsed, screaming recession; gold dumping as bitcoin soars; banks and big-tech both down; and then there’s a Russian military coup!??

The yield curve crashed back to its most-inverted this week – shouting ‘recession’ from the rooftops…

Source: Bloomberg

First things first, ‘hope’ – as measure by the ‘gap’ between US hard and soft data – is at its lowest since 2015…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin soared to one-year highs…

Source: Bloomberg

…completely decoupling from its recent trend with VIX…

Source: Bloomberg

…as the fear index crashed to a 12 handle – lowest since Jan 2020

Source: Bloomberg

Today saw more of the same – macro weakness and hawkish speak – stocks weakened early on (pre-open) after weak EU & US PMIs and hawkish chatter from Fed’s Bostic. The late-day weakness seemed to occur as Russian military coup rumors spread…

On the week, Nasdaq saw its biggest weekly loss since March, but Small Caps were the week’s biggest losers (also biggest weekly loss since March)…

Nasdaq is at its strongest relative to the Russell 2000 once again…

Banks and Big-tech were both down on the week – that’s the first time in 7 weeks (with the biggest drop in tech since March)…

Source: Bloomberg

On a side note before we leave equity-land, meme stock trading activity has increased to ~99th percentile in the last 5 years. Sounds like a good time for an equity market stumble…

Treasuries were mixed on the week with the short-end underperforming and long-end lower in yields on the week. It was a choppy week though overall…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied strongly on the week – 2nd best week since February…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos had their strongest week since March with BTC outperforming ETH…

Source: Bloomberg

Commodities were mostly down this week as recession/growth-scares hit. Oil & Copper were down, silver was ugly as PMs fell as the dollar rallied…

US NatGas rallied on heat-driven demand as air-conditioning demand from a Texas heat wave outweighed ample stockpiles.

Gold fell to 3-month lows…

Oil was down with WTI closing back below $70…

Finally, we note that VIX and equity markets are the most positively correlated ever over the last 10 days (typically they are negatively correlated – the red line)…

Maybe a good time to hedge.

…or it really is different this time.