Let there be light! President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has announced that the EU is to deliver 35 million energy-saving LED light bulbs to Ukraine worth €50 million. They will be made available free of charge at post offices across the country.
She said that Ukraine should be an inspiration to Europe, with thousands of Ukrainians changing to LED bulbs to work towards cleaner energy.
“They are energy-saving, very good,” she says in footage shot during the visit.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen visited Kyiv’s Ukrposhta to see how Ukrainians exchange old light bulbs for energy-saving ones. It is the European Commission that will allocate funds for the purchase of about 30 million LED light bulbs for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/o0rABb0RPY
The EU once again shows it thinks climate change is more important than anything else. The light bulbs are an even more surreal gift than the 5,000 helmets the Germans gave at the start of the war.
One of the most important questions is how Ukraine will use the bulbs when it’s suffering power outages as a result of the war?
Finally, we should not have the wool pulled over our eyes. If the EU bought these bulbs from the largest European producers, which come from Germany, the Netherlands, and France, this is nothing more than a way of giving public aid to these companies.
The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is vowing to expel all Chinese goods and materials from the United States’s defense supply chains.
Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said that he would lead the effort to expunge China-sourced goods during a Feb. 8 hearing of the committee on the subject of defense-industrial base security.
“The greatest concern I have with the defense industrial base is our continued reliance on China as the source of raw materials,” Rogers said.
“I won’t stop until we’ve completely rid the defense supply chain of Chinese goods and materials.”
Rogers said that communist China still inadvertently controlled too many parts of the supply chains required to equip the military and conduct security operations.
He singled out the United States’s continued reliance on China for rare earth minerals and non-advanced semiconductor chips and said that the regime’s grip on such supplies would need to be broken.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a tight grip on many of our material supply chains including critical minerals and semiconductors,” Rogers said.“We will never prevail in a conflict with China if they’re the source of our military supply.”
US Must Move Dependencies
Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said that the continued role of China in providing elements for the United States’s defense industrial supply chains was part of a greater legacy of irresponsible investment by U.S. corporations seeking to make an easy profit.
“Starting roughly in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, China became the global corporate easy button,” Smith said.
“That’s where you went to make stuff. Huge market, not much in the way of labor costs, certainly not environmental regulations. It was cheap, it was easy, it was the way to go.”
By Nour Al Ali, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
While there are many reasons to be bullish on oil, a contrarian view signals prices may fall in coming months so long as real interest rates keep rising.
The breakdown in the relationship between crude and real interest rates may result in a decrease in oil prices. Take a look at the correlation between WTI contracts and US 10-year real rates (ie the 10-year yield adjusted for inflation), measured on a 120-day basis. The relationship between the two assets has weakened after it was positive last year, when energy was the main driver of inflation and central banks kept raising rates in an effort to control price pressures.
Investors are now concerned about higher rates impacting demand for energy, leading to a supply surplus that could potentially leave more oil out there than buyers want. While there’s a growing chorus that believes the Fed will pivot, policymakers have kept up their hawkish calls for further rate increases despite a recent moderation in inflation. This is because inflationary pressures have become more ingrained in daily life and are no longer solely driven by temporary factors.
There are plenty of other factors that are influencing oil prices, mainly OPEC+’s control over supplies to maintain market stability, and an increase in expected demand out of China. Although traders have already taken these bullish factors into account, the risk remains that rising oil prices may be vulnerable to rising interest rates. The “don’t fight the Fed” concept may become increasingly relevant in this sector of the market.
The House of Representatives on Feb. 8 passed a bill that would end a vaccine mandate on foreign travelers entering the United States.
H.R. 185, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), is a brief bill.
“A BILL [to] terminate the requirement imposed by the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for proof of COVID–19 vaccination for foreign travelers,” the top of the legislation reads.
The legislation would forbid federal agencies from using any congressionally apportioned funds to enforce such a vaccination mandate.
In addition to overruling the CDC’s April 2022 order, the bill would prohibit the imposition of any similar vaccination requirement for foreign travelers entering the United States in the future.
The bill passed in a 227-201 vote.
“Life has returned to normal across the country,” Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) said in support of the bill. “Despite the rest of the world moving on from COVID, this administration persists in maintaining an unnecessary vaccination requirement for those entering the United States.”
The day before, the bill had easily glided through the House Rules Committee in a 9-3 vote. All nine committee Republicans voted to advance the bill. The committee’s Democrats, excluding an absent member, voted against the bill.
In an Oct. 25, 2021, proclamation, President Joe Biden announced a ban on entry to the United States for foreigners not vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, a ban which the administration said was a “science-based public health measure.”
Biden called specifically for a ban on unvaccinated “covered individuals”—non-citizens seeking to enter the country temporarily—being allowed entry by air travel.
In April 2022, the CDCannounced the “Amended Order Implementing Presidential Proclamation on Advancing the Safe Resumption of Global Travel During the COVID–19 Pandemic,” which put Biden’s rule into effect.
The CDC’s April 2022 order is stricter on those temporarily entering the United States for travel than on illegal aliens.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), in comments during the Rules Committee hearing, noted that COVID restrictions on foreigners legally entering the United States for travel are harsher than those imposed on illegal aliens.
Namely, Burgess relayed a conversation he had had during a visit to the border with Customs and Border Patrol agents.
He said the agents told him that unvaccinated illegal aliens are allowed into the country under the “catch and release” policy. This policy describes a procedure whereby illegal aliens apprehended at the border are released into the country to await their day in court. Statistics, however, show that many who cross the southern border illegally never show up for this date.
Burgess described vaccination as “purely voluntary” for illegal aliens entering the country.
It is standard procedure for committees at the start of a new Congressional session to outline their goals for the next two years, especially when a chamber is under new management.
With Republicans assuming control of the United States House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, the newly installed GOP leadership has been doing just that across the chamber’s 20 standing permanent committees and their 104 subcommittees and select temporary panels.
That transitional shift-change has been clearly evident this week in seminal session meetings of the 52-member House Energy and Commerce Committee and its six subcommittees and in the 45-member House Natural Resources Committee and its five subsidiary panels.
During four years of Democratic control, climate change, environmental protection, and “green” energy development were among primary policy drivers in adopting legislation designed to coax the nation away from reliance on oil and gas, including the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and $740 billion Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA).
During two days of nearly eight hours of hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Feb. 7, and before the full House Natural Resource Committee on Feb. 8, Republicans made it clear that many initiatives passed under the Biden administration promoting electric vehicles, carbon capture, green energy, and environmental protection are on the proverbial block.
During the near-six hour House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting, six witnesses testified on a raft of 17 Republican-sponsored bills that proponents argue are key to “restoring American energy dominance.”
Among the proposed measures that will dominate the committee’s and its subsidiary panels’ agendas in the coming months are bills prohibiting restrictions on hydraulic fracking without Congressional approval; expanding natural gas exports; repealing the IRA’s Green House Reduction Fund; and amending the Clean Air, Toxic Substances Control, Solid Waste Disposal, and National Gas Tax acts.
Within the tranche of proposed legislation on the committee’s “unleashing American energy agenda,” are bills calling for permitting reform, promoting development of “critical minerals,” and prohibiting the import of Russian uranium.
In kicking off the day-long hearing, Republicans argued that “unleashing American energy, lowering energy costs, and strengthening supply chains” must be a priority if the United States is to be economically competitive in the 21st century and beyond.
“America has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. We should be working towards developing a predictable regulatory landscape across-the-board that inspires innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological leadership, hydropower, nuclear, fossil energies, wind, solar, and batteries,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Rep. Cathy Rodgers (R-Wash.) said in opening the proceedings.
The nation needs an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, she and others insisted, claiming the Biden administration’s pro-green agenda is promoting technologies that either aren’t feasible or don’t have the domestic raw materials and processing capacity to now sustain.
Case in point, they note, is the promotion of electric vehicles (EVs) when more than 80 percent of the lithium needed to power EV batteries, and the capacity to manufacture them, are in China.
“Rush-to-green energy policies—both state and federal—have curtailed reliable energy and infrastructure, resulting in everything from blackouts to spiking prices,” Rodgers said. “These policies are unsustainable and lead to greater reliance on countries like Russia, or in our case, China. This is not a future any of us want.”
It’s been nearly 11 months since the end of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Key to NYC” vaccine mandate and public-school masking requirements. And President Joe Biden recently announced an end to the pandemic-related state of emergency on May 11. Yet many private businesses, cultural institutions, and schools continue to cling to COVID-era restrictions.
The remnants of pandemic policies are hodgepodge and nonsensical, ranging from vaccine and mask mandates to testing and isolation.
They do little to promote safety, but much to continue disruption.
Even though it is now widely accepted that vaccines don’t prevent transmission, some mandates persist. New York state has a teacher shortage, yet the city has fired nearly 2,000 unjabbed teachers and staff, thanks to the city’s vaccine mandate. It only today ended the mandate for city workers—but has no plans to rehire those fired.
Children and adolescents have suffered from unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety during the pandemic, yet unvaccinated parents are still banned from city schools, performances and games. Parents miss out on full participation in school experiences.
Some public schools enforce their own rogue restrictions because… science!Special Music School, a public specialized K-8 school, limits capacity at student recitals to only one parent per child, even while there are no restrictions in the same concert venue during non-school concerts.
Parent-teacher conferences remain virtual through the end of 2022–23 school year. Presumably this is due to the requirement that parents be vaccinated to enter school buildings, potentially creating inequity for unjabbed parents. In December, after two years, the Department of Education finally shut down its Situation Room, which informed school communities about positive cases. Yet related school emails still arrive in parents’ inboxes, along with rapid tests sent home by schools.
On the college front, SUNY, which lets individual campuses adopt their own restrictions, requires young, healthy students to be fully vaccinated—but only “strongly recommends” jabs to faculty and staff, who are older and more at risk (but have a union). NYU requires students to be both vaccinated and boosted.
Some cultural institutions, including museums and theaters, many of which receive taxpayer funding, also continue to enforce their own set of made-up mandates. NYU Skirball Theater requires audience members, including children, to be both vaccinated and boosted. Columbia’s Lenfest Center for the Arts requires proof of vaccination.
The Joyce Theater requires masks, as does City Center, though only on Tuesday evenings and during Sunday matinees, not at other times. Alvin Ailey requires them for all dance classes, and still practices social distancing.
Programs designed for children seem to be extra restrictive, especially dance schools, which are popular with young girls. The Upper West Side’s Steps on Broadway forces visitors and participants six months and up to be vaccinated, no medical exemptions permitted. Though masks are theoretically optional, teachers may request them “in some classes.”
NYC Ballet requires all dancers to mask during class and rehearsals and musicians (with the exception of horn players) to mask during performances.
NYC Transit Museum is still offering virtual programs to autistic children, while claiming to “support peer-to-peer interaction.” Older kids who have the privilege of going onsite at NYCTM must still mask. The Children’s Museum of the Arts has permanently closed its Charlton Street Space and is still doing virtual programs.
Broadway dropped its audience mask mandate July 1, 2022, yet staff continue to be masked.
Saddest of all, masks are still required at nursing homes, so the elderly, in their golden years, continue to be deprived of facial cues and the comfort of smiles, whether they like it or not.
This means countless older adults with hearing loss, dementia and other age-related limitations have been forced to live in a faceless, isolated, masked world for nearly three years now; there’s no reason whatsoever it should be that long, yet they have little power to effect change.
As New Yorkers fed up with the never-ending COVID restrictions know well, this is not an all-inclusive list. There are many other remnants—from testing trucks on every corner, to endless rapid tests sent home from school, to mask requests from teachers.
And the list goes on.
Though the pandemic is over, the restrictions clearly are not.
On Monday, Biden said we needed an “orderly transition” out of the public-health emergency. We New Yorkers also need an urgent return to normal.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Feb. 8 defended her agency’s promotion of masking after a new study found that protective masks had little effect on the spread of respiratory viruses such as COVID-19.
The Cochrane review analyzed randomized controlled studies, considered the gold standard by U.S. officials and others, but limitations undermined the conclusions, according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
“One of the limitations of that study, in addition to the fact that it included randomized trials from before COVID-19, is that it stated in the study that people actually had limited update of using masks,” Walensky said during a hearing in Washington. “Of course, randomized trials that look at mask use by people who aren’t wearing them are going to have limited utility.”
The CDC imposed mask mandates on public transportation users, including plane passengers, and on children in Head Start programs as young as 2, contradicting policies from other countries that left younger children maskless, if mandates were imposed at all.
The agency also repeatedly recommended that children, teachers, and others in schools wear masks, as well as people in common settings, such as grocery stores.
Multiple members of Congress pressed Walensky on the Cochrane review, which concluded that the available evidence shows a lack of effect in mask wearing against the spread of influenza or flu-like illnesses.
“While acknowledging the limited data pool, it found no clear sign of a reduction in transmission when using either medical or surgical masks,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said. “Yet today, CDC still recommends masks in schools for all ages, even though the emotional, mental, physical, and educational toll masking has had on our kids is widely recognized.”
Walensky told Rodgers, “You actually have to wear a mask for it to work.”
The CDC’s mandates and guidance on masks relied on cohort studies, Walensky said.
That included a non-peer-reviewed study that the agency published in its quasi-journal that compared the incidence of COVID-19 case clusters in schools located in districts with mask mandates with schools in districts without forced masking. Only two Arizona counties were studied.
A follow-up study that expanded on the number of districts involved and the time frame found that there was no link between school masking and COVID-19 cases.
The CDC also cites other studies in a scientific brief on the subject, including a randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh that found that masking had little effect on COVID-19 spread and a Chinese study of just 124 households.
Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) brought up the Cochrane study and said doctors have informed him that masks aren’t effective.
He asked Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the National Institutes of Health, whether that agency funded any trials examining mask efficacy in schools. Tabak said he wasn’t aware of any.
Walensky defended the lack of research.
“So many studies demonstrated … that masks were working,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, “that I’m not sure anybody would have proposed a clinical trial because in fact there weren’t equipoise.”
Apart from the Bangladesh trial, the two other randomized, clinical trials conducted in other countries provided little data to support masking against COVID-19.
Walensky also said this week that “now is not the moment” to drop mask mandates in schools. Many states have already lifted their mandates and others have recently announced that they’ll rescind their mandates.
Lockdowns
During the hearing, Walensky also defended the lockdowns imposed in the United States during the pandemic.
“I agree that we should do everything in our power not to have it happen [again],” she said, referring to school closures and other lockdown policies.
But she recounted how being a clinician in 2020, there was a morgue outside her hospital. When hospitals are overwhelmed and unable to take care of brain tumors and car accident victims, “extraordinary measures are necessary,” Walensky said.
“I do think when there are lockdowns, there’s decreased need for things like motor vehicle accident care,” she said, disagreeing with Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) on the issue.
When members pointed out that the COVID-19 vaccines don’t stop transmission, undercutting the rationale for vaccine mandates imposed by the Biden administration, Walensky pushed back, claiming that the vaccines prevent severe disease and death. It “doesn’t prevent transmission as well as it did for prior variants, but it does still prevent some,” Walensky said, referring to all vaccines as one type.
The CDC was consulted before the mandates were issued, she confirmed.
“What we have though is a modest prevention, like a 50 percent prevention, of risk of getting infected if you’re up to date on your vaccination, and that’s very important for frontline workers of all types to stay healthy, for children not to infect their grandparents that may be at risk,” said Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
“If you’re up to date, your risk of dying is reduced by 80 percent.”
Califf was referring to the updated bivalent vaccines, for which there’s no clinical data half a year after the administration authorized them. The U.S. government and outside researchers have said in observational studies that the bivalents provide a subpar boost against infection and a better boost against severe illness.
Billionaire Bets On South Florida Amid NYC Wealth Exodus
The billionaire founder whose company developed Manhattan’s Hudson Yards is making a big bet on South Florida amid a surge in wealth migrating from the Northeast.
Stephen Ross, of Related Cos, is actively looking to build projects located outside of West Palm Beach and Miami, where he’s already established several projects, Ross told Bloomberg.
“People are looking from the Northeast and relocating for jobs — not retirement — and companies are looking” for offices, he said, adding “It’s tax issues, and there’s the security issues. There’s just the ease of living.“
In the past two years, major technology, finance and law firms have moved or expanded to South Florida, drawn by the lower taxes and warmer weather. Ken Griffin’s Citadel has relocated its headquarters to Miami from Chicago, while companies including Apollo Global Management Inc. and Blackstone Inc. have taken space in the region.
One of Related’s mixed-use projects in West Palm Beach, dubbed The Square, has attracted the likes of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management. Other financial companies have signed leases at One Flagler, also in West Palm and set to be ready in 2024. Last year, Related and Swire Properties Inc. unveiled plans to build one of the tallest skyscrapers in Miami. -Bloomberg
And while South Florida is booming, major cities such as New York and San Francisco are seeing a giant exodus – causing demand for commercial office space to dwindle.
“New York will continue to grow, but it has its challenges, and a lot of people who don’t have to be there are looking not to be there,” said Ross. “It’s changing, it’s getting younger, the older people are moving out, the wealthier people are moving out.”
Ross’ Related, meanwhile, is pitching a casino resort on a site once slated for offices and housing, as the second phase of its $25 billion Hudson Yards project.
“We have huge investments, we’re still doing tremendous developments in New York,” the 82-year-old Ross said, adding “But I think Florida is going to capture an awful lot of people.”
Multiple cities in California are now seeing rampant, public prostitution activities, pushing residents in many places into stress and fear, with critics blaming the situation on a Democrat-supported bill that repealed a law against loitering for prostitution purposes.
East 15th Street, a neighborhood in Oakland, used to be a quiet area. However, things changed after prostitution activity rose. Resident Estefani Zarate worries about how this will affect her young children. “I’m scared for them to see (the women) in inappropriate clothes, (then ask) me questions and I don’t have answers for them,” she said to CBS News.
“It shouldn’t be introduced at the age of 4 years old that you’re going down the street and you’re seeing women dress like this (or) you need to learn ‘oh, if you hear gunshots, duck down,’” said Estefani’s sister Marlen Zarate.
Residents from the Capp Street neighborhood in San Francisco are pleading for officials to intervene after prostitution activity rose.
Following resident requests, city officials are reportedly planning to install barriers along a strip of Capp Street which is said to be where prostitution activities are the most concentrated.
In multiple cities across California, scenes of thong-wearing women on street corners, prostitutes twerking at traffic, and pimps tailing mothers who take their kids to school are becoming common.
Democrat Bill Against Loitering
Senate Bill 357, introduced by Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener, was signed into law last year by California Democrat governor Gavin Newsom. The bill repealed a law that prohibited loitering for prostitution activities. It came into effect on Jan. 1.
Some Republicans are blaming the law for making life difficult for families. “California Democrats’ policy of legalizing crime is creating more victims by the hour,” GOP Assembly leader James Gallagher said in a statement, according to Fox.
“Under Democratic rule, families and businesses are moving out, while human traffickers are moving in. It was clear from the get-go that this law would encourage and enable human trafficking, but that was apparently an acceptable result for the lawmakers who backed it.”
“[The law] hinder[s] law enforcement efforts to identify and prosecute those who commit crimes related to prostitution and human trafficking,” Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Carrie Braun told The Epoch Times in November 2022.
“Additionally, it could hinder the ability of identifying those being victimized.”
Vanessa Russell, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Love Never Fails, said that legalizing loitering for prostitution has created an increase in demand in Californian cities.
In areas like San Francisco and Oakland, there has reportedly been a tripling in the number of exploited people, she said.
“The anti-police sentiment that was leveraged to push this bill through touting safer streets for all … [is] unfortunately harming these populations much more than it helps because the police are no longer able to conduct early intervention with violent exploiters and buyers,” Russell stated.
Violence, California Prostitution Law
It is not just the presence of prostitution activities that is troubling the minds of residents. Some are disturbed by gunfire as well as public beatings.
“From the window right there, I’ll see three [people] ganging up on a girl,” a resident from Capp Street said to San Francisco Chronicle, gesturing toward a bay window that overlooks a busy intersection.
“They’ll be hitting her … I call the cops; no one comes. There’s nothing I can do.”
According to California law, prostitution is illegal. Charged as a misdemeanor crime, a first offense carries up to six months of jail time and $1,000 in fines. Subsequent offenses can carry higher penalties.
Before Senate Bill 357, those who loitered with an intent to commit prostitution also attracted similar punishment. Senate Bill 357 has not only decriminalized loitering but has also allowed people who have been convicted on these charges to petition a court to get these offenses sealed from their records.
Corporate America Splurges On Super Bowl Ads Despite Recession Threat
Corporate America isn’t buying the notion that the US economy could achieve a soft landing this year, as the Federal Reserve spent all of last year combating inflation with oversized interest rate hikes. Despite tremendous economic uncertainty, advertising spending for the Super Bowl is expected to hit a record high.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Geetha Ranganathan and Kevin Near wrote a note that shows companies locking in slots to advertise during the big game is over $6.5 million for 30-second spots, in line with NBC from last year. Some slots are topping $7 million.
“Sold-out ad inventory, surging sports bets and expectations for strong ratings are all helping support ad prices,” the analysts noted.
The total ad time for the Super Bowl runs approximately 52 minutes. Factor in unpaid ads, such as one from Fox and the National Football League, and the total air time for paid ads is around 42 minutes.
Ad insight firm Kantar said ad revenue from the game could bring in $570 million of in-game revenue for Fox. Then count pre/post ad revenue of around $75-$80 million. This could mean a record $650 million payday for Fox.
“NBC’s $636 million last year was an 18% jump from the prior year, and though ads are still robust, a slowing economy has weighed on sales,” the analyst said.
Tens of millions of Americans tune into the Super Bowl just to watch the iconic ads.
“According to an August 2021 survey among viewers in the United States, 43 percent of respondents said they tuned in to the Super Bowl to watch the commercials. When it came to women, this figure rose to 60 percent, while 24 percent of men said they tuned in to the big game in order to watch ads,” Statista wrote.
The threat of recession? Corporate America doesn’t care. They want the most valuable ad space in the world to reach consumers.
