Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via LewRockwell.com,

In Hayek’s famous 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, he warned that the intellectual and political classes of the democracies of that time were embracing some of the same ideas that inspired Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Stalin’s Russia:  comprehensive government planning, hyper regulation of industry,  nationalization, welfare statism, and collectivism in general.  He did not predict that these societies would end up “in serfdom,” however, as some have mistakenly claimed.  Quite the contrary.  In his first chapter he clearly stated that he hoped the ideas in the book would help these countries to avoid that disastrous fate.  He hoped the ideas of the book would be a roadblock on the road to serfdom.

The eleventh chapter of The Road to Serfdom is entitled “The End of Truth,” about the historical imperative in all totalitarian states throughout history to destroy freedom of speech so that the only true belief is “the social plan” imposed by the state, whatever that may be.  This is achieved by relentless institutionalized lying and propaganda, coupled with harsh censorship of all contrary ideas or even questions about the propriety of forcefully imposing one single “social plan.” This is American society today, in other words, in case you haven’t noticed.  (Socialism, Hayek said, has always been about substituting the plans of politicians for the plans that all of the citizens make for themselves.  It’s not a matter of planning versus no planning, but who is to do the planning).

The significance of propaganda in totalitarian countries, Hayek wrote, is that “If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading people of this or that.  The skillful propagandist then has power to mold . . . minds in any direction he chooses . . .”  Jeff Deist, among others, has commented that America today has become a “post-persuasion society” and he is right, almost eighty years after Hayek issued this warning.  The Left is no longer willing to seriously debate anything – at least for the time being while they control the universities, all three branches of government, the media, (laughingly-named) “entertainment” industries, and more.  Even dopey Prince Harry publicly denounced the First Amendment in a pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with Hollywood Leftists like his wife shortly after divorcing himself from his family and moving to Hollywood.  If you disagree with their latest version of socialist totalitarianism (“woke-ism” coupled with green hysteria and calls for worldwide central planning), then you can be canceled, smeared as a racist, a white supremacist, or even fired from your job and prevented from getting a new one.

The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda are even more profound.  It is “destructive of all morals” because it “undermines one of the foundations of all morals:  the sense and respect for the truth.”  An avalanche of Official Lies has always been the tool of “various theoreticians of the totalitarian system,” wrote Hayek, citing Plato’s “noble lies” and “social myths” championed by the French philosopher Georges Sorel.  The ends justify the lying means to totalitarians everywhere.  When was the last time a “White House spokesperson” did not lie in public?  (See my 1992 book, Official Lies: How Washington Misleads Us, with James T. Bennett).

Of course minority opinions “must also be silenced” and “every act of the government must become sacrosanct and exempt from criticism.”  This was never more on display than in government responses to the “pandemic” of 2020, followed by the Biden campaign and its collusion with “Big Tech” to censor even the president of the United States along with massive evidence of the colossal criminality and corruption of the Biden family crime syndicate.  This was arguably the biggest governmental assault on the First Amendment, apparently organized by the FBI and CIA, since it was essentially done away with by the John Adams administration’s “Sedition Act.”

Academe must also be thoroughly corrupted, said Hayek, for “the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed in a totalitarian system.”  American universities have gone almost all the way down to the end of the road to serfdom in this regard.  Many have fallen off the cliff completely.  This is especially true, said Hayek, of the disciplines of history, law, and economics.  They must be compromised in a way that supports the state rather than criticizes it, however mildly.  The American history profession is almost completely dominated by Marxists, for example, and economics has been plagued by Keynesian central planners and “market failure theorists” for decades.  As Doug Casey once remarked, most economists today “are political apologists masquerading as economists.”  They “prescribe the way they would like the world to work and tailor theories to help politicians demonstrate the virtue and necessity of their quest for more power.”  The field of economics, said Casey, “has been turned into the handmaiden of government in order to give a scientific justification for things the government . . . wants to do.”

In totalitarian societies, wrote Hayek, truth is not something that is discovered by learning, education, self-study, research, and debate and discussion.  Instead, it is “something to be laid down by authority . . .”  In today’s world, for example, global warming hysteria is “settled science,” the most un-scientific phrase ever uttered.  A true scientist always questions the status quo, not necessarily rejecting it but keeping an open mind that new research can alter his thinking.  Nothing is ever “settled.”  How a slippery politician like Al Gore is considered to be an expert on the philosophy of science – and atmospheric science to boot — is one of the wonders of the world.   (Don’t forget that the notion that the earth was flat was once declared to be “settled science” by the Al Gores of that day).

Medical science is not science, we have been told; Anthony Fauci is medical science. 

Or rather, the “authority” of Anthony Fauci, a grotesquely overpaid government bureaucrat is science.  Again, nothing is more un-scientific than these ridiculous, arrogant, and tyrannical pronouncements by Anthony Fauci and his political sidekicks.

“[I]ntolerance, too, is openly extolled,” in totalitarian societies said Hayek, anticipating by decades the 1960s-era “New Left” hero, the totalitarian intellectual Herbert Marcuse, who authored a widely-celebrated paper on “repressive tolerance,” the idea that only “the oppressed classes” deserve free speech.  In the world of the 60s “New Left,” whose students and political descendants now control almost all of academe, television, the media in general, much of government, “woke” corporations, and other institutions, the “oppressor class” is comprised essentially of all white heterosexual males, especially ones of European descent.  Everyone else is oppressed by them, the theory goes.  The poorest, lowliest, white redneck is said to “oppress” black millionaires and billionaires.  Question this theory in our post-persuasion society and you will be labeled a racist, a white supremacist, and probably even a Nazi.

Hayek based these ideas on his years of study of world history and of the totalitarian regimes of the early twentieth century.  “Wokeness” did not just suddenly appear and proceed to take over almost the entire Western world.  It is just the latest manifestation of totalitarianism that has been marching through the institutions for several generations.  There are always totalitarians in our midst, the title of Chapter 13 of The Road to Serfdom, and today’s totalitarians consider themselves to be standing on the shoulders of all those who preceded them, however unsavory they might have been.  That is why many on the Left celebrated after the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  “We no longer have to be associated with monsters like Stalin, Mao, Nicolae Ceaucescu, and other mass-murdering communists of the twentieth century,” they said.  And like all other totalitarians who came before them, they fully understand that freedom of speech is to them what sunlight or a Christian cross is to Dracula.  That is why they are all now hellbent on destroying Elon Musk, a man who is attempting to add a tiny smidgen of free speech to the stifling, statist political correctness of American society.  Their treatment of Musk will eventually make their treatment of Donald Trump seem like a love fest in comparison.

Their hatred for Trump, by the way, is derived from the same source as their hatred for Elon Musk:  Like Musk, Trump called out and publicized many of the official lies and official liars of the Washington establishment, especially those in the “fake news” business.  The Left considers the fight over free speech to be a political death struggle, and they are right about that.  If anything deserves to be strangled in its crib it is the Left’s current assault on the First Amendment.

Authored by David C. Rose via RealClear Wire,

In 1993 Douglass North won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in economic history. He stressed the importance of institutions—regularized patterns of behavior—for improving our understanding of how societies evolve and function. His main point was that high transaction costs choke off the economic activity that makes societies rich. Institutions are therefore vitally important because they help keep transaction costs low.

North’s insight helped revive institutional economics. Unfortunately many New Institutionalist economists viewed institutional theory as leaving little role for culture. Moreover, any role culture might play was subsumed in their paradigm as informal institutions. It is true that many cultural practices are informal institutions. But what if cultural beliefs can achieve outcomes that institutions can’t?

Suppose an individual from a poor country moves to a rich one and quickly starts to prosper. Most economists would argue that this happens because the rich country has better institutions.

But what if sudden uplift is just what happens when honest hardworking people from poor countries are dropped into high trust societies? In this case it’s trust, not institutions, that makes the difference.

This doesn’t mean that institutions are not important. Quite the opposite. Trust is so important because institutions are important, and many of them are highly trust-dependent. It’s not in every country that you would use an expensive coat to lay claim to a seat in a public place when you go to the rest room, for example.

David Landes, Deirdre McCloskey and Joel Mokyr have revived interest in the connection between culture and economic development. They argued that the beliefs and values of pre-industrial Europe set the stage for the rise of modern free market economies. In my latest book I explained why they would not have worked so well if they weren’t also culturally transmitted.

We don’t ponder whether to blink when dust blows into our eyes. We also don’t ponder whether to express sympathy to a friend upon hearing his mother died. Both involve behavior that is rather automatic, almost like it was encoded as an “if-then” statement in a computer program.

The first is baked in our genetic cake and is therefore a product of hardwired neural architecture, while the second is learned early in life and is therefore better described as a product of constructed neural architecture. At its core, culture is a mechanism for constructing a consistent neural architecture across individuals in a society to solve problems that are not well solved either by genetic encoding or consciously rational decision making.

If all behavior is consciously rational in the sense of Daniel Kahneman’s System 2 mode of thinking, then all individuals would always behave in a manner that was best for them and not the group. Game theorists would say they would “play defect” against rules created to support large group cooperation. This is a problem, because while we trust and therefore cooperate well in small groups, small group trust doesn’t scale up to work in the kind of large group contexts Adam Smith showed are necessary for the good life.

Smith didn’t think most behavior was consciously rational in the way modern economists think about behavior. He argued that our sensitivity to approval and disapproval provided a mechanism for forming consistent responses to circumstances. Smith’s perspective comports well with Kahneman’s conception of System 1 thinking, which is fast and intuitive, like holding a door for a stranger or leaving a coat to hold a seat. It’s pre-rational automaticity effectively circumvents rational analysis.

On the other end of the spectrum is genetic encoding. But if high trust societies were solely products of our genes, like honeycombs are for bees, then all human societies would be high trust societies. They aren’t because nearly all of our evolution took place in very small groups so there has been too little time to reinforce genes that support large group trust. Large group trust cannot be based on genetically encoded behavior. I submit that it can, however, be based culturally encoded behavior.

Some cultures convey moral beliefs that culturally encode the automatic rejection of untrustworthy actions. The earlier such beliefs are taught, the stronger they are reinforced, and the more they take precedence over other beliefs, the more likely behaving in an untrustworthy way isn’t even considered in adulthood.

When a critical mass of individuals abides by such beliefs, it becomes rational to presume most others can be trusted in most circumstances, producing a high trust society. Just as North would have predicted, by reducing transaction costs this makes cooperation through economic activity possible on a grand scale, unleashing human flourishing as never before. 

David C. Rose is a Professor Economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a Senior Fellow at Common Sense Society. He is author of The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior and Why Culture Matters Most, both from Oxford University Press.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People who have received COVID-19 vaccines express discriminatory attitudes toward unvaccinated people, a new study of over 15,000 citizens of 21 countries across the world suggests.

“Individuals who comply with the advice of health authorities morally condemn the unvaccinated for violating a social contract in the midst of a crisis,” two Denmark-based scientists wrote in their paper, published Thursday in Nature.

“Those who refuse vaccines report that they feel discriminated and pressured against their will.”

To measure COVID-19 vaccination status-based prejudice, researchers asked some 15,233 people how they feel if a close relatives of theirs are going to marry a vaccinated or unvaccinated person—a question that has long been used in surveys on discrimination along racial, ethnic, or partisan lines.

Specifically, participants were presented with brief descriptions of a series of fictitious individuals and asked to imagine that these are people whom one of their close relatives intends to marry. They were shown two profiles at a time, side by side, and asked to rate each profile by saying whether they agree or disagree with statements such as, “I would be unhappy if this person married one of my close relatives,” and “I think this person is untrustworthy.”

One of the six attributes describing these targeted individuals has been their COVID-19 vaccination status, randomly varying between “fully vaccinated” and “unvaccinated.” The other attributes were age, occupation, hobbies, personality, and “family background,” which distinguished between people “born and raised in [the respondent’s country]” and people who “immigrated from the Middle East.”

The Findings

Across six countries—Germany, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and the United Kingdom—selected to represent both affluent Western and developing non-Western nations, the unvaccinated were found to be disliked among vaccinated people (14 percentage points) as much as people with drug addiction (15 percentage points), and significantly more so than people who had been in prison (10 percentage points), atheists (7 percentage points), or people with mental illness (6 percentage points).

In addition, the overall dislike of the unvaccinated among vaccinated people (13 percentage points) was found to be two and a half times greater than that of Middle Eastern immigrants (5 percentage points). In fact, according to the paper, unvaccinated people face significantly more hostility than immigrants even in 10 countries that are deemed unfriendly to immigrants. Interestingly, discriminatory attitudes against unvaccinated Middle Eastern immigrants were found to be just as strong as those toward unvaccinated natives.

By contrast, researchers found that the unvaccinated respondents on average showed almost no discriminatory attitudes toward the vaccinated.

“The results demonstrate that prejudice is mostly one-sided,” the authors wrote. “Only in [the] United States and Germany do we find that the unvaccinated feel some antipathy towards the vaccinated. But even here we do not find statistical evidence in favor of negative stereotyping or exclusionary attitudes.”

“The observation that vaccinated individuals discriminate against those who are unvaccinated, but that there is no evidence for the reverse, is consistent with work on the psychology of cooperation,” said leading author Alexander Bor, a political psychologist at the George Soros-funded Central European University (CEU).

A Psychological Explanation

Such prejudice can be explained by a psychological mechanism against “free-riding,” according to the study. In other words, a highly polarized and moralized sentiment surrounding COVID-19 vaccination activated this mechanism in vaccinated people, causing them to see those who refuse to get the jabs as morally-failed “free riders” of a collective effort.

Read more here…

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

North Carolina Republicans told the Supreme Court on Dec. 7 that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures preeminent authority to make the rules for presidential and congressional elections without interference from the courts.

The case is important because, if the high court finds for North Carolina, the rules governing how states regulate federal elections could change dramatically. The hearing comes at a time when tensions between Republicans and Democrats over voting procedures are growing in light of former President Donald Trump’s continuing claims that the 2020 presidential election was marred by massive electoral fraud.

At issue is the once-obscure independent state legislature doctrine, under which Republicans argue that the Constitution has always directly authorized state legislatures alone to make rules for the conduct of federal elections in their respective states.

Democrats say this doctrine is a fringe conservative legal theory that could endanger voting rights, enable extreme partisan gerrymandering in the redistricting process, and cause upheaval in election administration.

Liberal law professor Richard Hasen has called the doctrine the “800-pound gorilla” of election law because of its potentially disruptive effect on election administration norms.

Conservatives, on the other hand, say the doctrine is derived from the plain text of the Constitution and would restore reasonable rules on the electoral playing field and allow elected state officials, instead of judges, to make election rules.

The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the doctrine directly, but some justices have said that it could have been argued in the Bush v. Gore case, which resolved the disputed 2000 presidential election.

The doctrine, if endorsed by the high court, could in theory allow state legislatures to select presidential electors in disputed elections, something critics decry as a threat to democracy.

When he launched the appeal in March, Tim Moore, a Republican who’s the speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, said the Constitution is “crystal clear: State legislatures are responsible for drawing congressional maps, not state court judges and certainly not with the aid of partisan political operatives.”

Moore is appealing the Supreme Court of North Carolina’s order redrawing the state’s electoral map against the wishes of the state’s Republican-majority legislature.

Two key clauses in the U.S. Constitution lay out the rules governing federal elections in the states.

The elections clause in Article 1 states, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”

The presidential electors clause in Article 2 gives each state the power to appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”

The case is Moore v. Harper, court file 21-1271.

During nearly three hours of oral arguments on Dec. 7, liberal justices pushed back against the doctrine, while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch seemed receptive to it to varying degrees.

Moore’s attorney, David H. Thompson, told the justices that the two constitutional provisions have been misinterpreted for years.

“The elections clause requires state legislatures specifically to perform the federal function of prescribing regulations for federal elections,” Thompson said.

“States lack the authority to restrict the legislatures’ substantive discretion when performing this federal function … and it is federal law alone that places substantive restrictions on states legislatures’ performing the task assigned them by the federal Constitution.

“For the first 140 years of the republic, there was not a single state court that invalidated on substantive grounds any congressional redistricting plan.”

Precedent holds that “the Founders tasked state legislatures with federal functions that transcend any substantive limitation sought to be imposed by the people of the state.”

Thomas wondered aloud if the court had the authority to consider this case.

Thomas asked Thompson what “the basis of our jurisdiction” was, given that “we don’t normally review state supreme courts’ interpretation of state constitutions.”

Thompson said the Supreme Court of North Carolina’s decision reflects the state’s law but is still “a violation of the elections clause and that’s why we’re here.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Thompson that his argument wasn’t resonating with her.

“If judicial review is in the nature of ensuring that someone’s acting within their constitutional limits, I don’t see anything in the words of the Constitution that takes that power away from the state.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked Thompson if it was his argument “that the state constitution has no role to play—period—in terms of imposing substantive limits on the exercise of that federal function.”

Thompson confirmed that was his position, saying that a state constitution may require that an election measure be presented to a governor for approval or veto.

Justice Elena Kagan seemed alarmed at the ramifications of Thompson’s argument.

The doctrine under discussion, she said, “gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country, and then you might think that it gets rid of all those checks and balances at exactly the time when they are needed most.”

“Think about consequences because this is a theory with big consequences,” she said.

Read more here…

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Millions of Americans could face a “refund shock” when they file their taxes next year because a number of pandemic-related programs are set to expire or have expired, said an analyst.

Data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) shows that the average refund taxpayers got back for their 2021 taxes was about $3,200, or some around 14 percent higher than the previous year. The next refunds will average about $2,700, said Mark Steber, chief tax information officer at Jackson Hewitt.

The 2021 tax year “was quite a remarkable year with the insertion of all those new tax breaks,” Steber told CBS News this week. “But jump ahead to this year, and a lot of the increases expired, hence the term ‘refund shock’ or ‘refund surprise.’”

Due to the expiration of some programs, “You’re probably going to have not as pleasant an experience as you had last year,” he noted. “There were larger, enhanced tax credits available last year that aren’t available this year,” Steber also remarked.

For example, the child tax credit is one benefit that will shrink when parents file their 2022 taxes. Normally, parents get about $2,000 for each of their children, but in 2021, the benefit increased to $3,600 for every child under 6 and $3,000 for minor children aged 6 and older.

Also, the Child and Dependent Care Credit that parents can use to pay for child care was boosted under the Biden administration-backed American Rescue Plan. That raised the credit up to $8,000 per family in 2021, or more than in previous years.

The IRS has already issued notices about potentially smaller tax refunds, noting in November that “taxpayers will not receive an additional stimulus payment with a 2023 tax refund because there were no economic impact payments for 2022.”

Additionally, the agency said, it will be more difficult to claim a deduction for charitable on a 2022 tax return.

“The IRS cautions taxpayers not to rely on receiving a 2022 federal tax refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills,” the agency said last month. “Some returns may require additional review and may take longer.”

Online Services

The agency this week again wrote that Americans who made more than $600 online selling goods and services will have that income reported to the IRS

People who made money via eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, Uber, and other digital services will face the new scrutiny and rules. It applies to anyone who made more than $600 via those platforms or via Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, PayPal, or similar platforms in return for goods and services.

Read more here…

Authored by Ana Paula Pereira via CoinTelegraph.com,

Trades made by Alameda Research were reportedly focusing on depeg Tether’s stablecoin…

Tether executives and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao worried that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), former FTX CEO, was attempting to destabilize the crypto market aiming to save the now-bankrupt exchange, according to reports on Dec. 9.

Messages seen by The Wall Street Journal of a Signal group chat named “Exchange coordination” reveals an argument between CZ and SBF on Nov. 10 about Tether’s stablecoin USDT. Members in the Signal group include Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell, Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Tether, among others.

According to the report, CZ and others in the group worried that trades made by Alameda Research were focusing on depeg the stablecoin, which would have a ripple effect in crypto prices. Binance CEO reportedly confronted SBF:

“Stop trying to depeg stablecoins. And stop doing anything. Stop now, don’t cause more damage.”

SBF denied the claims in a statement to the WSJ.

The alleged argument on the Signal group happened a day after Binance announced that it wouldn’t bail out its troubled competitor FTX, citing “reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations.” On Nov. 10, Tether’s Ardoino also said the company have no “plans to invest or lend money to FTX/Alameda.”

As reported by Cointelegraph, new details about the failed agreement between Binance and FTX were revealed on Dec. 9. In a twitter thread, CZ referred to Bankman-Fried as a “fraudster,” saying Binance exited its position in FTX in July 2021 after becoming “increasingly uncomfortable with Alameda/SBF.” SBF was “unhinged” at the exchange pulling out, according to Binance’s CEO.

In response, SBF claimed that Binance “threatened to walk at the last minute”, accusing CZ of lying about his role in the deal.

On Nov 11, FTX Group and nearly 130 companies – including FTX Trading, FTX US, under West Realm Shires Services, and Alameda Research – filed for bankruptcy in the United States citing a “liquidity crunch”.

Since FTX’s bankruptcy, SBF has been named in seven class action lawsuits and numerous probes and investigations, including a market manipulation probe by federal prosecutors.

The third installment of Elon Musk’s release of internal Twitter communications is devoted to the days surrounding the social media company’s decision to permanently ban President Trump.

Yesterday, we detailed part 1 – via veteran journalist Matt Taibbi, which focused on the period leading up to January 6th, including details about Twitter executives regular meetings with the FBI and DHS.

Today, in part 2, Michael Shellenberger reveals the chaos that ran wild inside Twitter on January 7th, as the same executives took decisions into their own hands to reassure ‘a few engineers’ that “someone is doing something about this.”

The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7

As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban.

On Jan 7, senior Twitter execs:

• create justifications to ban Trump

• seek a change of policy for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders

• express no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban

This #TwitterFiles is reported with @lwoodhouse 

For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump.

“Blocking a world leader from Twitter,” it wrote in 2018, “would hide important info… [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”https://t.co/qaqklHOHjc

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022

But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack grows.

Former First Lady @michelleobama…

… tech journalist @karaswisher…

…@ADL…

…high-tech VC @ChrisSacca, and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump.

Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel , Twitter’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust.

As context, it’s important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive.

In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats.

11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://t.co/sa1uVRNhuH pic.twitter.com/K1xmqQ0TrD

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022

In 2017, Roth tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”

In April 2022, Roth told a colleague that his goal “is to drive change in the world,” which is why he decided not to become an academic.

On January 7, @jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension

After, Roth reassures an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are”

Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share.

“GUESS WHAT,” he writes.

“Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.”

The new approach would create a system where five violations (“strikes”) would result in permanent suspension.

“Progress!” exclaims a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team.

The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing @jack for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections.

he colleague wants to know if the decision means Trump can finally be banned. The person asks, “does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?”

Roth says it doesn’t. “Trump continues to just have his one strike” (remaining).

Roth’s colleague’s query about “incitement to violence” heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.

On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.”

On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.”

But in 2019, Twitter said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization.

It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as “site-integrity-auto.”

“This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…”

Twitter employees use the term “one off” frequently in their Slack discussions. Its frequent use reveals significant employee discretion over when and whether to apply warning labels on tweets and “strikes” on users.

Here are typical examples.

Recall from #TwitterFiles2 by @bariweiss that, according to Twitter staff, “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”

11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

Twitter employees recognize the difference between their own politics & Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS), but they also engage in complex interpretations of content in order to stamp out prohibited tweets, as a series of exchanges over the “#stopthesteal” hashtag reveal.

Roth immediately DMs a colleague to ask that they add “stopthesteal” & [QAnon conspiracy term] “kraken” to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified.

Roth’s colleague objects that blacklisting “stopthesteal” risks “deamplifying counterspeech” that validates the election.

Indeed, notes Roth’s colleague, “a quick search of top stop the steal tweets and they’re counterspeech”

But they quickly come up with a solution: “deamplify accounts with stopthesteal in the name/profile” since “those are not affiliated with counterspeech”

But it turns out that even blacklisting “kraken” is less straightforward than they thought. That’s because kraken, in addition to being a QAnon conspiracy theory based on the mythical Norwegian sea monster, is also the name of a cryptocurrency exchange, and was thus “allowlisted”

Developing…

Stay tuned for part 3 tomorrow, when @bariweiss will reveal the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th that led to President Trump’s ban.

NASA’s historic uncrewed Artemis 1 mission to the moon and back will conclude on Sunday with the Orion spacecraft returning to Earth. 

On Sunday afternoon, the Orion spacecraft will slam through Earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 mph, or about 32 times the speed of sound. It will heat up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit before splashing into the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of Baja California at 12:40 pm EST. 

Orion’s descent operations begin around 12 pm EST. Forty minutes later, the spacecraft should be in the ocean if everything runs on schedule. Here’s the splashdown schedule for tomorrow (courtesy of Space.com): 

“At present, we are on track to have a fully successful mission with some bonus objectives that we’ve achieved along the way,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager, told reporters Thursday evening.

One of the most crucial parts of the mission will be testing the heat shield as Orion enters Earth’s atmosphere. If all goes well, this could indicate NASA is ready to fly astronauts around the moon in 2024 and then put them on the lunar surface by 2025. 

A live broadcast of the re-entry process will begin around 11 am EST. Watch Live here:

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX just announced a privately-funded moon mission with DJ Steve Aoki and a Japanese billionaire that could occur soon. 

Authored by Leticia Gonzales via NaturalGasIntel.com,

Against a backdrop of mostly mild weather across the Lower 48, winter unleashed its fury on the West Coast a bit early this season. The frigid temperatures and unusually heavy precipitation have fueled natural gas demand at a time when storage inventories are low, a drought has reduced hydro-electric power supplies and regional utilities are having trouble receiving coal deliveries.

The result: historically high natural gas prices that have surged to levels not seen since the summer of 2018. The surge in prices has spread across the Pacific Northwest, farther south throughout California and inland across the Rockies.

On Thursday, Northern California’s PG&E Citygate recorded spot natural gas prices as high as $36.00/MMBtu. SoCal Citygate cash reached a $33.00 high, while Malin hit $32.00. And that only proved to be batting practice.

On Friday, the highest price on the West Coast hit $55.00, with offers up to $60.00.

“I’ve seen prices spike before, but over a short period of time,” said Michael Wiliamson. His consulting firm Williamson Energy purchases wholesale natural gas for end-use customers in California.

“This sustained period of high prices has never happened before. There’s a lot of different things going on, and they’re all falling at the same time.”

Is It Really That Cold In California?

Bitter winter weather has slammed the West Coast this month, driving up heating consumption in a region that normally sees its highest energy needs in the summer.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said widespread heavy precipitation would begin to blanket the Pacific Northwest and Northern California on Friday and further over the weekend into the Northern Rockies, Great Basin and the rest of California. Anomalously high moisture associated with an atmospheric river was expected to usher in heavy mountain snow, as well as strong rains for lower elevations along the West Coast.

Snow totals should generally range between six inches and a foot for the higher elevations, according to NWS forecasters. Lighter accumulations of up to three inches were forecast for the interior valleys.

In the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, several feet of snow were expected, while excessive rainfall was possible along the coast of southern Oregon and Northern California. Rainfall totals could reach up to four inches, NWS said.

Even still, with temperatures forecast to climb into the 60s in Los Angeles and into the mid-50s in San Francisco, “it’s not really that cold,” said Fuel and Purchased Power’s Marlon Santa Cruz, manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The executive said a key issue facing the region was that storage inventories are lagging behind.

Supplies Reclassified, Not Refilled

Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (PG&E) in the summer of 2021 reclassified 51 Bcf of storage inventories to cushion gas, rather than working gas. It marked the largest reclassification in any one region, with some market observers calling the scale of the change “preposterous.”

Williamson said the problem wasn’t with the reclassification. It was that PG&E hasn’t rebuilt working gas inventories.

As of Dec. 2, Pacific stocks stood at only 217 Bcf, which is more than 18% below year-earlier levels and nearly 24% below the five-year average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Pacific is the only region that continues to fall significantly short of historical levels. After a string of above-average injections in the late fall, Mountain stocks sit about 6% below the five-year average. East inventories sit around 2% below that level. The South Central region, meanwhile, is now at a modest surplus.

“That’s the head of the nail,” Williamson said.

“If we had plenty of gas in storage, this wouldn’t be happening. Now, everyone is a hostage.”

With a client base that include commercial greenhouses and other small customers, the exorbitant prices are concerning, according to Williamson. He worries that if prices were to remain elevated – or climb even higher as the winter progresses – customers may be unable to pay their bills.

What’s more, the higher prices are not limited to California. In the Desert Southwest, spot gas prices at El Paso S. Mainline/N. Baja surged to $35.75 on Thursday, while the KRGT Del Pool rose to $32.85. By Friday, cash prices in the region also had rocketed to $55.00.

“At what point in time does a number get so high that people go bankrupt and stop paying their bills? I think we’re getting close to that point,” Williamson said.

He likened the situation to the fallout of Winter Storm Uri, where utilities filed for bankruptcy and spawned lawsuits and investigations into market manipulation. “People are going to grab lawyers instead of their pocketbooks.”

Other Issues

LADWP’s Santa Cruz agreed the storage situation in the West is a concern.

However, while stockpiles in Northern California remain short of what the market sees as comfortable through the winter, Aliso Canyon storage in Southern California has been “a savior” for the region as it copes with the heightened demand, he said. The storage facility, operating at a reduced capacity following a major leak in 2015, has often had to serve as a buffer during periods of strong demand.

In November 2021, the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to increase the amount of gas stored at Aliso Canyon ito boost winter supplies for gas and electric customers. The decision was seen as an effort to ensure reliability for the region.

California may not be the friendliest state to the natural gas industry. Several municipalities have banned the use of new natural gas hook ups, including Los Angeles. Santa Cruz, though, said the municipal utility is relying on natural gas more because coal deliveries also are falling short.

President Biden earlier this month averted a strike among railroad workers that could have put a stop to coal deliveries. Still, the strike was only one issue plaguing the railroad industry.

Santa Cruz said following the Covid-19 pandemic, Union Pacific and other railroad companies were forced to lay off workers. Many of the laid off employees never returned as the economy recovered. Now there aren’t enough engineers to drive the trains, he said.

“There is an endemic supply chain issue impacting the coal industry,” Santa Cruz said.

“Despite the mines producing, it’s the railroad that can’t deliver the contractual volumes. We find ourselves unable to ramp those coal-fired units up as we normally would. So we make up that generation with natural gas.”

Meanwhile, West Coast customers find themselves battling for limited supplies.

Wood Mackenzie notified clients of maintenance on Gas Transmission Northwest’s system between Dec. 6 and 8 that had the potential to impact up to around 300,000 MMBtu/d of volumes flowing through Kingsgate.

In the Permian Basin, pipeline work on El Paso Natural Gas and the Permian Highway Pipeline also cut into gas deliveries. Ironically, these curtailments have sent prices in that region plunging below zero.

“All these constraints, and the market is fighting for stagnant supply,” Santa Cruz said. “This is unprecedented.”