#10253

>>8010684 Coronavirus latest

>>8010848 One dead, five injured after Greyhound bus shooting Cali

>>8010879 More MSM fear porn to stop people opening emails giving truth about coronavirus

>>8010904 $90 Billion in US Taxpayer Money Donated to Global Slush Fund to Fight AIDS But a Portion of the Funds Made It to Clintons, Soros and Others Instead

>>8010919 China Arrested Doctors Who Warned About Coronavirus Outbreak

>>8010983 Thirteen men named as main suspects of Brussels attacks

>>8011017 US Triton drones deployed to Guam for surveillance over China, North Korea

>>8011050 US scientist recruited by China pleads guilty to lying to government

>>8011073 Turkey failed to notify of convoy movements in Syria’s Idlib before getting shelled by Damascus troops – Russian military

>>8011107 Hong Kong Closes Nearly All Border Crossings with China

Twitter Restricts Trump Super Bowl Ad For ‘Sensitive Content’

Twitter restricted President Donald Trump’s Super Bowl campaign ad after he tweeted it out Sunday night, according to Trump campaign Rapid Response Director Matt Wolking.

Trump’s ad highlighted the administration’s work on criminal justice reform and featured Alice Johnson, a former federal inmate who had been serving a life sentence on non-violent drug charges until Trump granted her clemency in 2018. Twitter placed a “sensitive content” warning over the video and required users to request access to view it.

The ad aired during Super Bowl LIV, but the president also tweeted it out. Wolking claims it was restricted after critics of Trump mass-reported it.

Twitter’s guidelines prohibit posting videos that are “excessively gory or share violent or adult content.”

“Yet again, Twitter is silencing President Trump and his campaign on their platform for putting out truthful and compelling content. The ad about Alice Johnson’s incredible story highlighted the President’s commitment to criminal justice reform and second chances for people,” Trump campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh told the Daily Caller.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/03/twitter-censor-trump-super-bowl-ad/

J-Lo and Shakira Super Bowl Halftime Show Features Kids in Cages

The Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, appeared to feature several children in cages.

Jennifer Lopez’s 11-year-old daughter, Emme Maribel Muniz, crawled out of a cage before she joined her mother and began singing.

In all, roughly a dozen children crawled out of cages as the song Born in the U.S.A. pulsated throughout the stadium.

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2020/02/02/watch-j-lo-and-shakira-super-bowl-halftime-show-features-kids-in-cages/

Iran stops sharing data on downed Ukrainian plane with Kiev after control tower audio leaked to local media

An investigation team in Tehran decided not to share any further data on the downing of Ukrainian airliner with Kiev, after local media published the recording of air traffic communications which took place during the tragedy.

"The technical investigation team of the Ukrainian airline crash, in a strange move, published the secret audio file of the communications of a pilot of a plane that was flying at the same time as the Ukrainian plane," Hassan Rezaifar, who leads the investigation of the crash in Iran, told Mehr News Agency on Monday.

The audio was provided by Iran to Ukraine as part of the joint investigation efforts. Rezaifar labelled the leak an "unprofessional" move by the Ukrainian side. "This action by the Ukrainians led to us not sharing any more evidence with them," he said.

Iranian military shot down Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on January 8, after mistaking it for an incoming US missile. All 176 people on board were killed, including 11 Ukrainians. After initial denial, Iranian officials admitted to making "un unforgivable mistake" three days later, and offered compensation to the victims' families.

On Sunday, the TSN news program, which is aired on Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, published the 5-minute excerpt from the believed communications between the air traffic control tower in Tehran and domestic Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 3768. The Iranian plane took off from the southern city of Shiraz, and was about the land in Tehran around the same time the doomed Ukrainian aircraft was taking off from the airport in Iran's capital.

According to the transcript, the pilots of Flight 3768 said they suddenly saw "the light from a missile," which they thought was coming from the city of Karaj, close to Tehran. A few moments later, the pilots saw "a big flare from the explosion." The air traffic controllers then tried to make contact with the Ukrainian plane multiple times, but to no avail.

TSN's report said the recording has not only revealed that Iranian aviation services "were hiding the true reason" of the plane crash, but "proved that Iranians saw the missile after its launch and before it had hit the Ukrainian aircraft."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed with TSN's take on the audio. "It truly proves that the Iranian side has known right from the beginning that our plane was downed by a missile. They knew it right after the downing happened," Zelensky told TSN.

https://www.rt.com/news/479952-iran-ukraine-evidence-sharing/

>>8011373

no feel free to do so

Trudeau Minister Proposes Forcing News Websites to Have Govt Licence

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has stated that news websites, along with social media companies, could be forced to obtain government licences to operate in Canada.

The minister, who has been tasked with updating Canada’s broadcasting laws using the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), stated that internet news sites will be “asked” to obtain a government-approved licence, broadcaster CTV reports.

The report, entitled “Canada’s communications future: Time to act”, was released on January 29th and included 97 recommendations. It details how the CRTC would be vastly expanded to not only regulate radio and television broadcasters but news websites as well.

“If you’re a distributor of content in Canada and obviously if you’re a very small media organisation the requirement probably wouldn’t be the same if you’re Facebook, or Google. There would have to be some proportionality embedded into this,” he said during a CTV interview.

When asked directly how the legislation would affect foreign websites, with Breitbart News specifically named, Guilbeault said that he did not think foreign sites would be blocked in Canada if they did not comply with the CRTC.

“Frankly I’m not sure I see what the big deal is,” Guilbeault said. He added that other foreign companies in other industries actively comply with Canadian regulations.

“We recommend that the existing licensing regime in the Broadcasting Act be accompanied by a registration regime. This would require a person carrying on a media content undertaking by means of the Internet to register unless otherwise exempt,” recommendation 56 of the report states.

Current CRTC regulations include forcing commercial radio-broadcasters who primarily play music to have at least 35 per cent of their content per week come from Canadian artists.

Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chairman in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa labelled the report “candidly extreme” and added it has no “physical boundaries”.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner has also expressed concern over the proposals in the report saying: “It’s very paternalising and also very frightening to think that the government would try to impose or say that’s the role of the government to control. That puts us in league with countries that control the media.”

Similar moves toward limiting free speech online have been made in Europe in recent months as well, with an October ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union allowing governments to force social media giant Facebook to remove content.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/03/trudeau-minister-proposes-forcing-news-websites-government-license/

EU Holds Trade Deal Ransom for Access to UK Fishing Waters

The EU’s chief negotiator on a UK trade agreement, Michel Barnier, has said there will be no trade deal without continued EU access to British territorial fishing waters.

On the day that Prime Minister Boris Johnson lays out his plans for a Canada-style free trade agreement, Mr Barnier has said that the UK must cross one of its own red lines by linking a deal to access to fishing waters.

Mr Barnier told France Inter radio in comments reported by the Associated Press that “there will be no trade deal with the British if there is no reciprocal access deal for our fishermen”.

He continued that “we will negotiate access to the British territorial waters for European fishermen at the same time that we negotiate access to European markets for British fisheries products. I hope I make myself clear.”

European politicians had recently suggested that EU access to Britain’s lucrative fishing waters could be linked to a trade deal, specifically to continued access of the City of London to the EU’s financial markets.

On Friday, the day the UK left the EU, Brexit minister Michael Gove has said that Britain will not trade access to her fishing waters in exchange for access to EU financial markets — but did not rule out selling access to fishing waters to EU countries.

Mr Gove had responded with a blunt “no” when asked on Sky News whether fishing access rights would be traded for a financial market deal. However, the minister had said on Friday: “If people want to fish in our waters, we will decide. My own view is we can have a friendly relationship with other countries, we can regulate their access to our waters in a way that will work for everyone, but we’re in control.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/03/eu-holds-trade-deal-ransom-access-uk-fishing-waters/

Marine Le Pen: Brexit is a ‘Terrifying Failure’ For the European Union

Marine Le Pen, the president of the French populist right-wing party Rassemblement National (National Rally), congratulated the United Kingdom for regaining its “freedom” but went on to say that Brexit was a “terrifying failure” for the European Union.

“After multiple twist and turns, the UK has finally regained its freedom. But this is a terrifying failure for the EU”, said Ms Le Pen.

“We will no doubt see, over the coming months and years, that the UK did the right thing and will probably benefit a great deal. In fact, I have already noticed that the disaster-mongering has already given way to cautious warnings from those who were sure the British people would be ruined, there would be massive unemployment…” she added, according to the Brussels Times.

“I also think this event is not generating a great deal of comments considering a founding EU country just walked out. That’s not exactly insignificant”, Le Pen concluded.

On Twitter the populist leader wrote that Brexit should mark the beginning of a new “European Alliance” that is more reflective of what the majority of European citizens want, adding that “this European Union will go down in history as a resounding failure!”

Ms Le Pen’s comments come in contrast to President Emanuel Macron, who called for more powers for the European Union in light of Britain’s exit from the bloc.

“This Brexit is possible, has been possible, and comes into force in a few hours, because we have too often made Europe a scapegoat for our own difficulties and also because we have not changed our Europe enough. More than ever, we need Europe”, said Macron.

“I would be lying to you to say this evening that the future of our country could be built on less Europe”, he said as to a possible French exit (Frexit) from the EU.

In 2018 President Macron admitted that the people of France would “probably” vote to leave the European Union if given the chance to vote on a similar referendum to the Brexit vote in 2016.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/03/marine-le-pen-brexit-is-a-terrifying-failure-for-the-european-union/

Terrorist Organization Claims Credit For December Attack On Florida Naval Base

An Islamic terrorist organization claimed credit this weekend for the December 6, 2019, terrorist attack on Naval Air Station Pensacola which resulted in the deaths of three U.S. sailors and severe injuries to eight other Americans.

“Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed on Sunday that it directed a Saudi military officer to carry out the shooting,” The New York Times reported. “In an audio recording released on Sunday, the leader of the Yemen-based group, Qassim al-Rimi, claimed responsibility for the Dec. 6 attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola, according to SITE, an organization that tracks jihadist media.”

The Times noted that the group “produced a copy of his will as well as correspondence that indicated he had been in contact with Al Qaeda. Experts said those elements gave the claim a plausible air.”

The development shines new light from a separate report from late last week that indicated that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly killed al-Rimi in a drone strike last month in Yemen.

Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a former C.I.A. officer, told The Times that Al-Qaeda’s release of the audio was “a statement that AQAP has infiltrated the Saudi military, which is an embarrassment for the Saudis.”

Colin P. Clarke, a senior fellow at a New York-based research organization, said that Al Qaeda’s claim “makes the F.B.I.’s battle with Apple for access to [the terrorist’s] phone even that much more critical.”

On January 13, Attorney General William Barr announced the findings of the government’s findings and declared that the attack on the base was a terrorist attack.

“The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology,” Barr said. “During the course of the investigation, we learned that the shooter posted a message on social media on Sept. 11 of last year that said: ‘the countdown has begun.’ Over Thanksgiving weekend, he visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. He also posted other anti-American, anti-Israeli, and jihadi messages on social media, and did so two hours before his attack at the naval base.”

http://www.stationgossip.com/2020/02/terrorist-organization-claims-credit.html

Major airline to sever ties with chocolate supplier over the owner's pro-life, Christian views

Swiss Air Lines is said to have nixed its relationship chocolate manufacturer Läderach over its owner's affiliation with pro-life, Christian causes, LifeSiteNews' Martin Bürger reported.

The airline had a business relationship with chocolatier Läderach that spanned over a decade, providing passengers with small boxes of its world-famous chocolates as a way of saying thanks for flying with the airlines.

Now, after months of protests from activists, Swiss Air has decided to sever ties with the chocolate-maker and will stop distributing its truffles and other sweets in the first half of 2020.

Why are they attacking a chocolate-maker?

The owner of Läderach, Jürg Läderach, is also the president of Christianity For Today, an evangelical organization based in Switzerland. The company's CEO, Johannes Läderach, is also on the board of CFT. The organization is a sponsor of various March for Life rallies in the European nation.

On its website, CFT also promotes traditional marriage between a man and a woman, reinforced by a Christian foundation, as the backbone of civilization. The organization also calls for parents to instill Christian values in their children and the protection of human life—from conception in the womb to natural death.

Attacks on stores

In October, far left activists attacked one of the chocolate-manufacturer's boutiques in Basel, Switzerland, with butyric acid, which is said to have a strong odor similar to human vomit. LifeSiteNews noted that after the attack, Läderach had to close its shop in Basel for two days. Additionally, a German newspaper reported acts of vandalism in seven individual stores.

Shortly before Swiss Air Line decided to end its business ties with Läderach, a German LGBT group called for boycotts of the chocolatier. "One way of protesting would be, for example, if hotels or restaurants decided to eliminate Läderach's products from their range of goods and clearly mark the reason."

Läderach CEO Johannes Läderach commented on the controversy in an interview: "The business in Switzerland will still grow in 2019, but we have customers who will no longer buy from us. However, new customers came into the store, who were sorry to see a conflict being played out on the back of the employees."

Läderach denied that either she or her company have any issues with LGBT communities and emphasized the chocolatier has zero tolerance for discrimination.

"We have homosexuals working for us, too. We don't ask them. I attended a gay network event because I wanted to hear what the LGBTQ movement has against Läderach. There, I explained that I may have a different opinion on same-sex marriage [sic] or on the question of when life begins. But this does not mean that I have anything against homosexuals. Läderach has a zero tolerance for discrimination," Läderach said.

http://www.stationgossip.com/2020/02/major-airline-to-sever-ties-with.html

Cartel Gunmen Set Mexican City Ablaze After Drug Lord’s Arrest

Cartel gunmen torched vehicles and clashed with Mexican authorities as they lay siege to the second-largest city in Michoacán following the arrest of a mid-level commander within the Los Viagras cartel. That cartel boss is reportedly linked to the mass murder of several men whose bodies were hung from highway overpasses last year.

The raid took place on Friday afternoon when Mexican authorities went after Luis Felipe “El Vocho” Barragan, a key leader within Los Viagras cartel. The attempt to capture the drug lord set off a violent reaction by the cartel. Videos recorded by citizen journalists captured the violence as Los Viagras gunmen carjacked several vehicles only to set fire to them along the numerous highways that lead to Uruapan — one of the main avocado production areas in Mexico.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2020/02/02/cartel-gunmen-set-mexican-city-ablaze-after-drug-lords-arrest/

This Shows How Broad The Overvaluation Is Today

In the dotcom bubble overvaluation was really focused on tech. Something interesting about the market recently is the big tech names are performing much better. AAPL MSFT etc. As this chart shows.

schrts.co/AJpUaphH

The S&P500 is weighted toward larger market cap companies. The equal weighted index is what it would be if all companies were weighted equally. So the ratio S&PEW/S&P (red line) declines if the larger market cap companies are doing better than the smaller ones.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/this-shows-how-broad-the-overvaluation-is-today/

Arizona Quietly Sells 16,810 Acres to Freeport-McMoRan for Mining Waste

The Arizona State Land Department this month sold nearly 17,000 acres of pristine desert land to Freeport-McMoRan, a Phoenix-based international mining company, which plans to use the property to store waste from its Bagdad copper mine.

The company purchased the land for about $13.5 million as the sole bidder during a January 6 auction. According to a document posted publicly prior to the sale, Freeport-McMoRan plans to use the site for a "tailings storage facility," referring to the often-toxic, sludge-like byproduct of mining. The purchase stands to essentially double the size of Freeport-McMoRan's mining operations in Bagdad, which, according to the town's website, accounts for roughly 20 percent of the company's North American copper production.

The plat equals roughly 25 square miles — larger than the island of Manhattan.

It is nearly seven times the size of a pending land acquisition by a British-Australian company for a mining operation near Superior. That project, Resolution Copper, would involve extracting copper from beneath Oak Flat, an area that Native American opponents consider sacred, and until a land swap, was protected from mining.

Yet whereas Resolution Copper's plans to conduct mining operations on 2,400 acres of federal land triggered a years-long process involving stakeholder meetings and public hearings, studies and news articles, protests from the San Carlos Apache tribe, and a rider on a defense spending bill from the late Senator John McCain, Freeport-McMoRan's deal with the state of Arizona slipped by when few were paying attention.

But the recent transaction between the copper corporation and the state did not go entirely unnoticed.

Joe Trudeau, an ecologist who serves as Southwest Advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, followed the deal for about a year before the sale went through. He said Freeport-McMoRan's mining waste plan poses risks to habitats for countless Sonoran Desert species, as well as water sources in the area like streams and aquifers.

Because the proposed waste site was managed by the Land Department, biologists and other researchers have not been able to survey the property to determine what endangered species may be residing in the area. Trudeau said that it is likely that some common species live there, including mule deers, bobcats, mountain lions, black bears, and rattlesnakes.

"That is habitat that will be lost for the rest of our lives and probably hundreds of years into the future, if not forever," Trudeau said. "This is a tremendous impact of almost unprecedented scale in Arizona."

As with most large mining operations, Freeport-McMoRan's waste storage proposal also raises concerns of water contamination. The Bagdad area, which is about 65 miles west of Prescott, sits close to several watersheds, including for the Santa Maria River, the Big Sandy River, and the Bill Williams River.

Freeport-McMoRan has a track record of water contamination. In 2008, the Arizona Department of Air Quality fined the company $100,000 after finding that it discharged a "highly corrosive acidic solution" into a publicly accessible creek, exceeding the state's quality standards for copper, zinc, and acidity. In 2012, Freeport-McMoRan reached a $6.8 million settlement with the Department of the Interior for contaminating rivers, streams, and aquifers near its mine in Morenci. The federal government also determined that the company endangered migratory birds in the region. In 2017, an audit in Indonesia calculated that the company's mining operations in the southeast Asian country had caused environmental damage worth $13.25 billion.

Freeport-McMoRan did not respond to request for comment. Nor did the Arizona State Land Department.

The Bagdad area has already seen at least one serious case of mining contamination, though it came from a separate company. In 2017, Attorney General Mark Brnovich pressed charges against Bagdad Hillside mining company for leaking millions of gallons of arsenic into a public creek that residents sometimes used as a swimming hole. The company was forced to pay $2.7 million in fines over the pollution.

http://www.tathasta.com/2020/02/arizona-quietly-sells-16810-acres-to.html

Angry Mike Pence calls on Ilhan Omar to be KICKED-OUT of Congress

OVER 200,000 SIGNED PETITION TO REMOVE ILHAN OMAR FROM HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

www.applyng.info/over-200000-signed-petition-to-remove-ilhan-omar-from-house-foreign-affairs-committee/

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/must-watch-angry-mike-pence-calls-on-ilhan-omar-to-be-kicked-out-of-congress/

Bloomberg's $10 million Super Bowl ad caught making 'misleading' claims about violent gun deaths among children

Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg's $10 million Super Bowl commercial includes a misleading statistics on violent gun deaths among children, according to Fox News. The network also found that Bloomberg's ad depicted an adult victim of a violent crime as a child.

In the emotionally-charged 60-second Bloomberg spot, Calandrian Simpson Kemp discusses her son's violent death. "On a Friday morning, George was shot. George didn't survive. I just kept saying, 'You cannot tell me that the child that I gave birth to, is no longer here.' Lives are being lost every day. It is a national crisis."

An un attributed statistic then flashes on the screen: "2,900 CHILDREN DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE EVERY YEAR."

Where did the number come from?

Reporters at Fox found that the source for Bloomberg's data is the candidate's own anti-gun group. A recent report by Everytown for Gun Safety arrived at the 2,900 figure by including teenagers 18 and over in its calculation.

Bloomberg's ad implies the statistic only includes young children, but when the Washington Free Beacon's Stephen Gutowski removed the young adults from the calculation, the total number was cut by nearly half.

The victim was an adult, not a child

While obviously tragic, the Bloomberg ad is wrong to suggest that Kemp's son was a child. According to Texas state appellate court documents obtained by the news network, the shooting victim, George Kemp, was 20-years-old when he was killed.

The Texas court filings state that when police officers arrived at the shooting scene, "they discovered a deceased male, later identified as George Kemp, age 20, lying face down in a pool of blood." Additionally, the documents stated that the death was the result of a "gang-related shooting" where "two groups of young men," including Kemp, had met "for a fight."

None of these details were mentioned in Bloomberg's Super Bowl commercial.

"It is regrettable but not surprising that salient facts didn't make the ad," an NRA spokeswoman told Fox News. "Bloomberg cherry-picked aspects of the story to push his agenda. Bloomberg pushes for confiscation of guns and stripping regular Americans of our right to self-defense while he enjoys armed security 24/7. He sees America as his kingdom, and the rest of us as his peasants."

Meanwhile, a representative from the Bloomberg campaign defended the commercial.

"Ask any grieving parent whose 18- or 19-year-old son or daughter was shot and killed, and they will tell you they lost a child," Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman Julie Wood told Fox News.

The ad is scheduled to be aired after the Super Bowl halftime show at Sunday's game where the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the San Francisco 49ers.

https://postnewsd2.blogspot.com/2020/02/bloombergs-10-million-super-bowl-ad.html

A US spy satellite just launched from NZ. Here’s what you need to know

The controversial mission, ‘Birds of a Feather’, is the first launch for a US spy agency from NZ. Ollie Neas explains what we know – and even more importantly, what we don’t.

Last May, The Spinoff reported that New Zealand Space Agency staff had met with officials from a major US intelligence agency, the National Reconnaissance Office or NRO.

The outcome of those discussions is now clear: Rocket Lab’s first launch of 2020 is of a classified NRO satellite – and it took off from the Mahia Peninsula yesterday afternoon.

The mission, which follows a series of launches for US military agencies last year, is both the first launch for a US spy agency from NZ and the first dedicated launch for the NRO from outside the US.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the mission has not been without controversy, with the Green Party voicing concerns in light of the Trump Administration’s recent aggression in the Middle East.

But should we be concerned? What actually is being launched? And why is a spy satellite being launched from NZ in the first place? Here’s what you need to know.

The NR-who?

The National Reconnaissance Office is the US intelligence agency that handles America’s satellite reconnaissance activity.

Although established in 1961, the NRO’s existence was not acknowledged publicly until 1992, and it remains lesser known than its more prominent peers, the CIA and NSA.

But its work is significant: it operates around 50 of the over 150 US military satellites that are publicly known, and it provides data collected from those satellites to both the US military and other intelligence agencies.

The NRO is best known for collecting imagery of the Earth – such as the insanely detailed photo that Trump casually tweeted of an Iranian launch site. But it also collects signals intelligence, which includes intercepted text and voice communications and data collected from other sources like aircraft and missiles.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/01-02-2020/a-us-spy-satellite-just-launched-from-nz-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

How are Stocks Going Up While Earnings Go Down?

The primary driver of stock prices is supposedly earnings, right? So how is it that earnings as a percentage of GDP have been falling since a peak in late 2014, and yet the major averages like the DJIA and SP500 are up 60% since then?

This week’s chart looks at some data which is buried deep within the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ report on National Income and Product Accounts. You can find it at apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=19&step=2, then go to table 1.10, line 15. Like I said, it is deep.

What it reflects is total pre-tax corporate profits for all corporations in the U.S., not just those in the SP500 or any other index of public companies. I go the further step of dividing it by GDP to create the plot you see here.

The interesting revelation is that the Fed’s QE programs were supposed to help boost the actual economy, but it did not really work. What happened instead was that all of the money-printing boosted stock prices, which is great for investors. But it did not flow through to the “real” economy.

Normally when there is a divergence between stock prices going higher and earnings going lower (as a % of GDP), that is a setup for an important top for stock prices. The timeframe over which such divergences tend to matter is usually around 1-3 years. So it is “irregular” that this divergence has been going on for 5+ years now, and we are still waiting for it to matter.

President Trump and Congress pushed through a package of tax cuts and regulatory reform in 2017, and that has demonstrably helped the stock market as well as the unemployment rate, which remains at 3.5%, a multi-decade low. But it did not do anything to change the slope of the downtrend in corporate profits.

So why is that? Why didn’t the tax cuts help overall corporate profits? The answer lies in this next chart, which looks at this same plot of corporate profits and compares it this time to the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/how-are-stocks-going-up-while-earnings-go-down/

Hacked e-mails reveal that billionaire George Soros is best friends with Petro Poroshenko…and he can pick up the phone anytime to call Jack Lew.

Well Soros created an operation in Ukraine and is now banned from ever entering the country, so that says something.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/hacked-e-mails-reveal-that-billionaire-george-soros-is-best-friends-with-petro-poroshenko-and-he-can-pick-up-the-phone-anytime-to-call-jack-lew/

Licensing Parents? The Latest Bad Idea In America’s Licensure Craze

America is addicted to licensing. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Consider this recent incident out of Chicago: shocked by the death of an infant boy in his ward, who prosecutors say was murdered by his father, Chicago Alderman Ray Lopez took to Twitter in January to express his outrage.

He said he was tired of seeing tragic stories like this and had a plan to end them. “Time to start requiring childbirth licensing, conception fees or toddler escrows in order to be a parent,” the alderman tweeted. “If love doesn’t motivate good behavior, perhaps hitting their pockets will.”

For many Americans, the idea is shocking — and rightly so. But given the uptick in licensing and how deeply it has become ingrained in our culture, it may not be that far-fetched.

Indeed, in the last century, America has seen an explosion of licensing. As of 2020, nearly a quarter of all jobs require a license — a five-fold increase from 1950, when only five percent of jobs required one. Americans have become accustomed to requiring licenses to become a florist, a travel agent, and even a shampooer at a salon. If parenting really is “the hardest job there is,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people want to start licensing it, too.

And the alderman wasn’t joking, either. He stood by his stance after being contacted by the Chicago Sun-Times, saying that if he could make it happen legally, he would. However, he did acknowledge that such a thing would not likely be possible in America, stating: “I don’t think that there’s any way that we can truthfully license people to have children. This is not China. We’re not a Communist country with child-bearing laws.” Alderman Lopez is right. This is not Communist China, and thank God. China’s one-child policy led to an infanticide epidemic, undocumented children, forced abortions, and dangerous birthing scenarios that led to increased maternal mortality.

Those outcomes are tragic, but not surprising because government-mandated rules and licensure always come with unintended consequences. Requiring cosmetology licenses to cut and color hair led many aspiring stylists to take out thousands of dollars in debt for low-paying jobs. Requiring a license for hair braiding has saddled countless minority women with fines and even jailed one woman for practicing her all-natural heatless hairstyling. Like nearly every license, Alderman Lopez’s parenting license would unquestionably come with its own unintended consequences.

Lopez’s intent with a rule like that, of course, would be to prevent violent people from becoming parents, but nonviolent mothers who still fail to obtain a parenting license for some other reason will likely have their child forcefully taken away. With more children entering foster care than ever and a shortage of foster parents, the system has never been more strained. Taking children away from parents, then, would only add to America’s bloated foster care system.

Not only this, but it is likely many expecting mothers will not give the state a chance to take their child. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which a woman gets pregnant, told she has failed some “parenting test,” then runs off to give birth to and raise her child in secret (or at least, in secret from the government). As we can see in populations of undocumented immigrants, when people have to keep their life secret from the government, they often have to work for low wages, work dangerous jobs, and forego health care. Under these conditions, a “bad” parent would only become worse.

America’s race to license away people’s rights under the guise of public safety has gone too far. Alderman Lopez’s support for parenting licenses is significant because, although he knows it’s futile, it’s chilling that a lawmaker has genuinely and unapologetically proposed parental licensing to the public. The infant’s death was brutal and tragic, but tragedy cannot justify bad policy.

https://www.activistpost.com/2020/02/licensing-parents-the-latest-bad-idea-in-americas-licensure-craze.html

The Old Puppets Return: Meet Bolivia’s Corrupt Washington-Backed Candidates

Elections are looming in Bolivia. Despite closing ranks to force out Evo Morales’ left-indigenous government, the different factions of Bolivia’s pro-coup right have fallen out with each other less than three months into their rule. The crisis boiled over on January 26, when Jeanine Anez, the self-declared ‘interim’ president, declared that she would stand as a candidate, despite pledging not to. Her announcement triggered a rebellion within her own cabinet that she crushed by purging the dissenters.

However, the problem facing the Bolivian right is much larger than Anez. To understand their predicament, one must understand the two factors they all have in common. Firstly, their direct and longstanding ties to the United States, most of them predating the November 10 coup. Secondly, the vast and complex web of corruption that they have all had to pass through to get onto the ballot. This article is the second installment of a two part series covering the coming election in Bolivia. The first installment investigated the candidates taking on Bolivia’s U.S.-backed right-wing government.

The old puppets return

In Bolivia, the tendency to recycle senior figures of the most unpopular governments has become a sort of right-wing political tradition. This election, Carlos Mesa and Jorge Tuto Quiroga will be the torchbearers of that tradition. Both have served as vice president and president during the neoliberal period and both presided over periods of profound crisis that came about as a result of trying to implement policies demanded by the United States.

Quiroga, running under the Libre 21 alliance, governed in the late 1990s and early 2000s under former military dictator Hugo Banzer. A stalwart of the old establishment, Quiroga is most notorious for the repressive violence he exacted against Campesinos in the Chapare region. ‘Plan Dignidad’ was drawn up with the U.S. and was aimed at eradicating the traditional coca crop and breaking the strength of Chapare’s union organization. Quiroga placed Bolivia’s armed forces under the authority of DEA commanders who coordinated an extraordinarily violent ‘war on drugs.’ The first six months of Quiroga’s presidency saw about one death per week, and two injured per day as the ‘war on drugs’ intensified against coca farmers in the Chapare. When he eventually reached an agreement with the coca growers union in 2001, he was castigated by the U.S. embassy. They said that instead of negotiations, “a firm and continuous response would have weakened the political base of Evo Morales even more.” The repressive tactics were resumed shortly after and the conflict was reopened.

Mesa, running under Citizens Community Alliance, was equally servile during his short period in power. Mesa took office just after Quiroga and was elected vice president in 2002. By 2003, months of anti-privatization uprisings had rendered the country ungovernable. Mesa took the presidency by default when his partner Sanchez de Lozada was overthrown and had to flee to Miami by helicopter.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/bolivia-elections-meet-us-backed-right-wing-candidates/264559/