Winston Churchill loved paraprosdokians, figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected.
1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on my list.
3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
4. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
5. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
6. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting
it in a fruit salad.
7. They begin the evening news with ‘Good Evening,’ then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
9. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out, I just wanted pay checks.
10. In filling out an application, where it says, ‘In case of emergency, notify:’ I put “DOCTOR.”
11. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
12. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street…with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
13. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
14. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
15. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
16. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
17. There’s a fine line between cuddling and…holding someone down so they can’t get away.
18. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
19. You’re never too old to learn something stupid.
20. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
21. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
22. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
23. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
24. I’m supposed to respect my elders, but now it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one.

   A Racist Training Program for The US Navy

By Capt Joseph R. John, June 26, 2021: Op Ed # 563

“Recent comments by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, demonstrate his willingness to support the venom of leftist ideology, and particularly its “anti-white” bigotry, under the same guise of “Critical Race Theory.”  Among the troops, is a disaster, destroying “Combat Effectiveness”, “Unite Cohesion”, creating dangerous racial fractions in the US Armed Forces, and destroying the once color blind military.  Such upheavals within military ranks are untenable and will only undermine morale, gravely diminishing all military capabilities.  Communist China, Marxist Russia, and Iran’s Islamic Terrorists are laughing while they expand their militaries.

What must be clearly understood about the enlistment oath, the every member of the US Armed Forces takes, is that the ultimate pledge is not to any person or cabal, but to the Constitution of the United States of America.  It is not a vow of blind allegiance, negating any other law or premise of right and wrong, mindlessly doing the bidding of whoever claims to be in power at the time.  First and foremost, American military personnel are swearing to never willingly engage in any activity that would do harm to the Republic they serve.  Yet on an ever increasing basis, that is what is being demanded of those who take the oath, at the hands of the Biden, Harris, Obama cabal and its minions among the self-serving “political” class of military leaders in the Pentagon.  What Milley, a truly corrupt and dishonest member of the deep state, is demanding of all military personnel, is that they violate their enlistment oath; a self-serving Milley realizes he either follows the Biden, Harris, and Obama Administration dictates that are destroying the color blind US military, or be removed from his high paying position.

Here’s a little insight for General Milley, and any of the other Joint Chiefs, like the woke Chief of Naval Operations referred to in the below listed article who align themselves with the ant-white racist Critical Race Theory. “Critical Race Theory” is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.  It is not about promoting equality among all the differing ethnicities who comprise “We the People.”  It is about presuming “total guilt” among “one” race, “White Americans”, and invoking that as justification for every form of unfettered bigotry and racial discord from leftist blacks and other minorities who are willing to pile on and vilify all whites.” 

                                                                                                                               (Joint Chiefs Demand Military Personnel Violate Enlistment Oath; Christopher G. Adamo | Jun 25, 2021)

If you click on the below listed link, read the article by Daniel Greenfield, and watch the slanted video prepared by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, you will understand that the Domestic Enemies of the United States Constitutional Republic are now running the Department of Defense while destroying the “Combat Effectiveness” and “Unit Cohesion” of Obama’s new “Woke” Navy.  The article that opens, when you click the link, outlines the Racist Training Program that US Domestic Enemies have put in place. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/racist-training-program-us-navy-daniel-greenfield/

The long term goals of the Racist Training Program, are outlined in the below listed article by Daniel John Sobieski, that follows the text of this Op Ed.  The goal of the Racial Training Program is to drive highly qualified white Conservative, Christian, and Constitutionalists career members of the US Armed Forces who voted for President Trump out of the US Armed Forces.  The Domestic Enemies of the United States have been recruiting non-white Progressives, Leftists, Socialists, Marxists, and Transgender/Gay recruits, to replace the highly qualified white Conservative, Christian, and Constitutionalist’s career members of the US Armed Forces who are being marginalized, so they will never be selected for promotion, and out of frustration, will be driven out of the US Armed Forces. 

Why have Republicans, led by McConnell and McCarthy, done absolutely “nothing at all” to prevent Biden, Harris, Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer from destroying the “Combat Effectiveness and “Unit Cohesion” of every branch of the US Armed Forces?  It is being done to the delight of Communist China, Marxist Russia, and the Iran’s Radical Islamic Terrorists.  Those three countries are feverishly expanding their armies and navies in preparation to invade Taiwan, to destroy the US Navy, and to then take control of a weakened United States with the support of their Socialist allies, the US Domestic Enemies in the United States.

While the rapid buildup of the Chinese Communist and Russian Navies is underway, Biden, Harris, and Obama have just cut back the long-range plans, put in place by the Trump Administration, to expand the US Navy Fleet of combat ships.  The growing Chinese Communist Navy currently has 350 ships.  For the first time in history, the US Navy with 293 ships, is smaller than the Communist Chinese Navy.  The Communist Chinese Navy is rapidly building a modernized and technical sophisticated fleet; it has its third aircraft carrier under construction, with plans to build four additional aircraft carriers.

Republicans in Congress, led by McConnell and McCarthy, are focused on raising donations to fund their 2022 mid-term Congressional campaigns, believing that will be the key to winning the 2022 mid-term Congressional elections.  It appears, eight months after the 2020 election, that extraordinarily little action has been taken to eliminate the Communist Chinese owned Dominion Voting Machines installed in 31 states, that count the votes on election day.  Failure to be involved in an all-consuming full court press, to remove the Communist Chinese voting machines, will be disastrous in the 2022 Congressional Mi-term elections.  It leads one to believe that McConnell and McCarthy have learned little from the election theft that occurred in the 2020 election, when Communist Chinese Dominion Voting Machines vote totals were changed via the Internet, late on election night when most voters were sleeping, with the help of their Socialist US Domestic Enemies allied with Communist China. 

On the 2022 election day, the Communist Chinese Dominion Voting Machines will, once again, be connected via the Internet directly to Communist Chinese operatives offshore, working with their Socialist US Domestic Enemies, who will allow Communist China to change the vote totals in each of the 31 states, at will, late on election night, to flip the vote totals once again, ensuring Socialist Democrats will steal the 2022 mid-term Congressional election.  Massive voter fraud and Ballot Harvesting will once again be perpetrated by Pelosi and Schumer with Socialist Democrats in 50 states. 

If in November 2022, the same Communist Chinese owned Dominion Voting Machines are used in the 31 states that employed those machines to count the vote totals on election night, then the result of that election will be a repeat of how Communist China and their US Socialist Democrat allies stole the 2020 presidential election, when state officials, not the state legislatures, also conducted the election in those battleground states in violation of Federal Election Laws and the US Constitution.   American Citizens have 17 short months, to convince McConnell and McCarthy to “do something, do anything”, to remove the Communist Chinese owned Dominion Voting Machines from 31 states, or the US Constitutional Republic will become a Socialist State under the control of Communist China’s allies in the House and Senate.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt    USN(Ret)/Former FBI

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

https://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

https://www.facebook.com/combatveteransforcongress?ref=hl

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” -Isaiah 6:8

The Constitutional Conservatives

Chief Of Naval Operations: “I Have Not Yet Begun To Be Woke”

Daniel John Sobieski 

June 18, 2021  

Or should his title be chief of navel-gazing operations? Someone should tell Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday that he has just one job – to manage and deploy the ships of the United States Navy in such a way to guarantee our freedom of the seas and to deny the enemy the use of those seas to attack the United States, sending enemy fleets to the bottom of those seas if necessary in time of war.

He is a military warrior. He is not a social justice warrior. Diversity to him, if I may be so bold as to use a gender pronoun, should be the proper mix of aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and submarines needed to fight  America’s naval battles and project American power to defend our homeland and our allies. China and Russia don’t fear the diversity of our crews or the ethnicity and gender of the finger that launches that Tomahawk missile only their ability to fight and win battles.

But no, instead of preparing our fleets for battle, Admiral Gilday is damning the torpedoes and going full speed ahead on pushing Critical Race Theory on the Navy by putting a book espousing Critical Race Theory on the Navy’s reading list for sailors. His recent testimony before Congress shows us the trouble we’re in”

Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, did not answer questions Tuesday about whether author-activist Ibram X. Kendi’s opposition to interracial adoption and capitalism is extreme.

But, Gilday did tell the House Armed Services Committee that Kendi’s controversial book “How to Be an Antiracist” would lead to “a better Navy” by promoting more discussion on racism in America. 

Kendi is Director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, and his book contends that America is a fundamentally racist country. 

At the hearing, Cong Jim Banks, Lt/USNR (R-IN-3), an endorsed Combat Veteran For Congress, teed up a question to Gilday by noting that “the Navy recently completed a one-day ‘stand-down’ to remove extremism from the ranks.”

“In my view, Kendi has espoused extremist beliefs that clearly violate the oath to the Constitution I took when I served in the Navy,” Banks said….

“Let me ask you again, Admiral: Do you expect that after sailors read this book that says that the United States Navy is racist, that we will increase or decrease morale or cohesion and recruiting rates into the United States Navy?”

Gilday replied: “I think we’ll be a better Navy from having open, honest conversations about racism.”

The U.S. military is in fact the greatest meritocracy in the world. In the best tradition of Martin Luther King it judges people on the content of their character and their ability to fight, not the color of their skin. This book Gilday is pushing on sailors does not improve military preparedness or morale. Who wants to fight and die for a fundamentally racist country?

Here’s some fact, not theory, for Admiral Gilday. The Chinese and Russians want to be our oppressors. They want us to be oppressed by them. Preparing for that end, Russia recently held naval exercises off Hawaii:

Russian ships are conducting the largest military exercises since the Cold War off the coast of Hawaii, sending the US Air Force scrambling hours before President Biden meets Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The exercises, conducted by the Russian Navy in the Pacific Ocean 300 to 500 miles west of Hawaii, include long-range bombers, surface ships and anti-submarine aircraft.

The US Air Force scrambled F-22 stealth fighters from Hawaii in response to the exercises.

Russia has conducted joint naval exercises with China, which has built the world’s largest navy with the fruits of its theft of U.S. intellectual property and technology and trade imbalances. The Chinese are laughing at our wokeness as it prepares to do battle with and defeat the U.S. Navy and as it prepares to invade Taiwan.  They are not concerned with diversity or the proportion of Muslim Uighurs on its ship as it moves to take command of the seas:

Take a look around. Russia recently conducted large naval drills around Ukraine. Chinese aircraft and warships are busily trying to intimidate Taiwan and bully Philippine fishermen in the South China Sea. All the while, Beijing assiduously has been expanding its navy at breakneck pace.

That pace is staggering as Beijing acquires port privileges and naval facilities around the globe. China’s new deep water navy is aimed at seizing Taiwan, kicking us out of the Western Pacific and neutering our nacal capabilities worldwide:

China has the largest navy in the world. And it’s not just big, but it’s getting better.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants,” states the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2020 annual report to Congress on Chinese military power. “In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020.”

China’s Navy “is an increasingly modern and flexible force that has focused on replacing previous generations of platforms with limited capabilities in favor of larger, modern multi-role combatants,” the report says. “As of 2019, the PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-role platforms featuring advanced anti-ship, antiair, and anti-submarine weapons and sensors.”

China’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers has garnered the most attention. The PLAN has one decrepit ex-Soviet carrier, a newly commissioned carrier that is the first built in China, a third carrier under construction, and plans to build an additional four or more vessels. Fitted with advanced features like an electromagnetic launch system, a Chinese carrier fleet could provide air cover for an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, or even confront the U.S. Navy in the first carrier versus carriers battles since World War II.

An editorial in China’s The Global Times, a newspaper seen as a mouthpiece for hardline nationalists in Beijing warns of the consequences of resistance warns, “If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt these activities, then a U.S. China war is inevitable in the South China Sea.” As Investor’s Business Daily has noted:

Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has laid claim to two disputed chains: the Paracel Islands, about 200 miles from the coast of Vietnam, and the Spratly Islands in the southeastern part of the South China Sea. China’s territorial ambitions include the Senkakus in the East China Sea, part of what Chinese military doctrine refers to as the “first island chain” that surrounds China.

In the South China Sea, as of February, China had finished construction on no less than six different island reefs from which to project its power in the South China Sea.  Included in its military effort is the construction of a 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) long runway on the artificially expanded Fiery Cross Reef as a base for Chinese fighter aircraft. According to Reuters,

China’s creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea is happening so fast that Beijing will be able to extend the range of its navy, air force, coastguard and fishing fleets before long, much to the alarm of rival claimants to the contested waters.

Reclamation work is well advanced on six reefs in the Spratly archipelago, according to recently published satellite photographs and Philippine officials. In addition, Manila said this month that Chinese dredgers had started reclaiming a seventh.

A few years ago, naval commanders expressed concern that our ability to respond to such threats has been severely compromised by leaders more concerned about rising sea levels than rising threats on those seas. The Navy captains’ Congressional testimony came after the Chinese announcement that it was building its second aircraft to go along with a refurbished Soviet carrier, the Liaonng, commissioned by China in 2012 after extensive refitting of the 25-year-old vessel. As IBD has reported, the Liaoning is only the first step I the building of a blue-water navy capable of competing with our diminishing one, with Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, warning that the U.S. was losing its Pacific dominance to China:

China’s Communist Party-affiliated newspaper, Global Times, gloated over Locklear’s warning, noting his remarks in a story beneath the headline “U.S. losing grip on Pacific: PACOM.”

In the Times story, Jin Canrong, a deputy dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China, said the American admiral’s comments recognize China as a rising military power. Indeed, it is. China has launched its first stealth drone, known as Sharp Sword, and is developing indigenous aircraft carriers. Its “two-ocean strategy” is based on the goal of building a fleet of five or six carrier battle groups.

China’s first battle group, led by its first carrier, the Liaoning, recently conducted a monthlong exercise that saw the refurbished Soviet-built flattop and her escorts sail south to the waters near Taiwan. During the exercise, a Chinese warship nearly collided with the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which was shadowing the battle group.

China is preparing for a naval confrontation with the United States. We may lose that confrontation in the South China Sea because the U.S. Navy is focusing on “wokeness”, not readiness.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and free-lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.    

Since crypto-currencies only exist in the cloud, how do you access your wealth when the electricity goes out?

Rolling black outs all along the West Coast in 2019, 2020, and locked down with brown-outs in 2021, how do you “spend” or trade crypto-currencies?

EMP’s, and there are several gov’t USAF unclassified bulletins posted herein and links to Janes articles about them herein, coupled to Russian, Chinese, and No Korean hacking, how secure are these fantasy currencies?

And, if Elon Musk says that Tesla will, after all of what, six months?, no longer take Bitcoin as currency to purchase a car, what’s that say about its real use in the real world if even Elon Musk won’t touch it?

Just curious, who is actually profiting with this stuff? What happened/happens to the actual cash that went/goes into the purchase of crypto-currencies?

Just curious.

FINANCE / GOVERNMENT WATCH / POLITICS

Biden-omics – Seven Deadly Sins

Posted Wednesday, May 12, 2021   |   By AMAC, Robert B. Charles   |  4 Comments Share Tweet Email

Biden-omics is coming – massive debt, unchecked spending, higher inflation, taxes, interest, unemployment, and hype.  Those seven blips are in formation on most economists’ radar.  They result from historical ignorance, socialist instincts, recklessness, and disrespect for private businesses and citizens.  The seven blips – in order:

First, massive debt — There can be no argument.  We are in a debt dive, record-breaking national debt, record publicly held, and federal outlays now far beyond tax revenues.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported on April 30 that “mandatory spending” hit $4.6 trillion annually.  CBO confirms the dive:  Outlays (spending) totaled $5.8 trillion, revenue projected $3.5 trillion, carry-forward deficit $2.3 trillion, and debt held by the public $22.5 trillion.  So, with a huge deficit overhang, taxes cover just 65 percent of what Congress is spending.  Do you see the problem?

Like an airframe in a steep dive, reality comes up fast, or else your nose does – with all the associated pain.  We should hope on the nose coming up, but there is no sign – no cost-cutting, debt reduction, painful austerity, trust in the private sector.  Instead, we have debt indifference and runaway spending.   See https://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget.

Second, unchecked spending – How much excess federal spending do we have?  Stunning already, stunning proposed.  Beyond $4.9 trillion in “regular” spending (non-COVID) and $6 trillion in previously unappropriated or emergency supplemental (COVID) spending last year, Biden added $1.9 trillion in 2021 for COVID, despite economists arguing more debt will slow the economy.  Already, “regular” spending (mostly “entitlements”) nearly doubled from 2008 to 2021, just over $2.5 to nearly $5 trillion. See https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-spending-3305763.

Now, we hear Biden’s White House and Democrats calling for “trillions more” in federal spending – so-called “infrastructure” ($2.3 trillion, defined as anything), “American family” programs ($1.2 trillion, more anything), and “immigration” (quarter of trillion, money for those inside the US illegally), foreign aid (for those sending illegal aliens north), and one-party electoral monopolization (complete with DC statehood).  How much debt is contemplated?  The zeros would make a new paragraph.  Even the New York Times puts new spending at $6 trillion – over where we are!  See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/us/politics/biden-spending-plans.html; https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-key-u-senate-democrat-142826733.html; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-american-families-plan-900-billion-cost/; https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/21/inside-the-beltway-the-biden-plan-20-million-illeg/; https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-biden-idUSKCN2AT3T4.

In short, Biden thinks US taxpayers – and struggling small businesses – should bankroll a huge increase in federal spending on things most Americans neither need nor want, at a time when revenues fell 35 percent shy of covering last year’s spending. Make sense?  Hardly.

Third, higher inflation – This is where predicting is easy.  With mass debt, spending, and indifference, the dollar’s value falls.  More paper money chases less wealth, as new spending means more debt and taxes, sucked from the productive private sector into the non-productive public.

Prices will rise sharply – at home and for foreign inputs as the dollar falls. Just check gas prices, as Biden spends more and pinches energy. Or check Jimmy Carter’s track record – when inflation ran away.  Even liberal economists cannot duck it – inflation is about to roar. See, e.g., http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/get-ready-for-the-most-painful-inflation-since-the-jimmy-carter-years-of-the-1970s/;  https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/gas-prices-top-243-in-pa-to-hit-highest-point-in-two-years-how-much-higher-will-they-go/ar-BB1gu5rC?ocid=uxbndlbing; https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-29/faster-inflation-is-coming-how-bad-will-it-be.

Lest you think this an exaggeration, the federal government “produces” nothing, while a dollar left in the private sector has an estimated 16-fold “multiplier effect” – one producer passing to the next, 16 times.  Who will inflation affect?  You and me. Average Americans, small businesses, older Americans on fixed pensions, younger on fixed wages, those paying loans with variable interest rates – are all in trouble.

Fourth, higher taxes – Biden and Democrats have set the spike. To “pay for” new spending, they push higher taxes on “the rich” – conveniently pushing class warfare, forgetting that in America, merit is what makes people rich, and anyone can become rich with hard work, ingenuity, luck, and lower taxes.  No, they aim to “punish” – so watch out, they are coming for small business, which could mean your job. See https://taxfoundation.org/joe-biden-tax-plan-2020/.

Fifth, higher interest – Of course, another easy prediction is how the Federal Reserve reacts to inflation.  They raise interest rates to “slow” the “overheating.” Higher rates reduce borrowing, hurt debt holders, increase payments on the national debt, and slow the real economy – the inflation aside. See, e.g.,  https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2021/01/21/warning-higher-interest-rates-are-coming/.

Sixth, higher unemployment.  Unfortunately, when taxes and interest rates go up, when the cost of borrowing, inflation worry, federal debt, spending, and overall uncertainty rises, consumer spending, business investment, and employment fall. That means – as it did under Carter – higher unemployment.

Seventh, hype.  Now we come to the irony.  President Biden is either oblivious or buys into socialist centralization, mass spending, inflation, unemployment, and the debt dive. Biden avoids discussing these problems, framing debt as an investment (despite the net drain on the private sector), pretends taxing the rich is good (only if you ignore upward mobility), and spins bad as good.

Last week, Biden blamed bad employment numbers on Trump, then pushed them as good news since they justify more unemployment benefits and federal spending.  Bizarre, but what else can you do if you are driving the economy into a ditch – or are asleep at the wheel?  See, e.g., https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/05/07/biden-attempts-to-spin-disastrous-jobs-numbers-n2589122.

Short story:  The private economy – left alone – would roar out of COVID.  Instead, Biden and Democrats are hitting it with mass debt and spending, setting up higher inflation, taxes, interest, and unemployment.  Radar blips are clear – and getting closer.  Americans should plan and then tell every public official to stop spending their money.

[Crypto-currency is not a currency and will be of no use whatsoever when our enemies hack the code and steal it all. Buddy of mine, Mike, now in Castle Rock, had his ‘purse’ hacked and lost everything in it. When he went to Bit-coin, they said that it was his fault and not theirs. Oh, Well!

No petrochemicals, no food, no electricity, no jobs, no money.

Gold, silver, and ammo, urban fire team drills now being offered on-line. Somewhere on the blog is Tom Chittum’s, ‘Civil War: II.’ /s/ Bill]

NATIONAL SECURITY / POLITICS

Could China Win a War with the U.S. Over Taiwan?

Posted Friday, May 7, 2021   |   By AMAC Newsline   |  6 Comments Share Tweet Email

AMAC Exclusive by Daniel Roman

While the new Biden team at the Pentagon is preoccupied with bringing the “woke” revolution to the U.S. Military, China is taking full advantage of the distraction of America’s frivolous political class. If senior Biden appointees at the Pentagon were properly focused on preventing an actual war rather than on waging a left-wing culture war, they might take a moment to register the appropriate sense of alarm about the situation with Taiwan. Here is the briefing the Biden team needs to be receiving on what I have termed “the most dangerous place on Earth.”

The bottom line: the U.S. may be stumbling into war in the Taiwan Strait–and despite our overwhelmingly military advantage in terms of the capability of our Armed Forces, in such a conflict, a disaster for America could be more likely than most Americans would believe.

As I argued in the first installment of this series, for the Chinese Communist Party, the question of retaking Taiwan is not a matter of if–it’s a question of how and when.  Taiwan’s centrality to the semiconductor trade makes it a linchpin of global supply chains. But more importantly, the continued existence of a rival “Chinese” regime in Taipei not only calls into question the legitimacy of the CCP government in Beijing to speak for all of China; it also raises doubts about just how impressive the record of the CCP has been in turning China into a great power.

In the CCP’s determination to retake Taiwan, War has been an option contemplated since 1949, and Beijing has threatened to resort to just such methods at least three times. Once in 1955, again in 1958, and most recently in 1996. To China, however, war comes in many forms. There is, of course, the military element, and here China’s buildup is posing a threat that almost all American officials recognize.

Military strength can be assessed in two ways. First, in an absolute sense. Who has the greater destructive potential–, the more formidable aircraft, the more advanced weapon systems? The second is to consider which side is better equipped to accomplish a specific task.

There is no doubt that the United States maintains a vast technological superiority over the People’s Liberation Army forces. While the gap has closed in recent years–and quantity, as the saying goes, often has a quality of its own–when it comes to destructive potential on a global level, the United States is unequaled. This is especially true when it comes to the ability of each side to inflict damage on the other’s homeland. The United States possesses the ability to not just hit targets anywhere in China, thereby paralyzing China’s transportation and communications infrastructure, but naval and air superiority on a global level which could cripple the Chinese economy.

While China might be able to compete with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea, there is little the Chinese could do to challenge American dominance in the Middle East or the Americas in the event of a conflict. As such, Beijing could expect the U.S. to be able to close the Panama Canal, the Suez, and the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca to Chinese shipping. As for the ability to strike each other’s homelands, while China can hit American targets with nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons generally do not factor into conflicts with conventional geopolitical objectives.

While all of these advantages would spell doom for China in a prospective World War III against the United States, the important thing to understand is that China’s leaders have no intention of fighting a World War III against America. At least not for the foreseeable future, and preferably not ever if it can be avoided. China has a limited objective, namely asserting its sovereignty over Taiwan, and the playing field for that conflict is very different. While the United States, in theory, could use all of the means at its disposal to destroy China in order to stop China from taking Taiwan, this is highly unlikely in practice, in the same way, that the United States would never have resorted to World War III to stop a Soviet Invasion of Poland in 1981 to crush Solidarity, or during the Cold War to remove Tito from Yugoslavia.

For one thing, virtually all of the vital strategic chokepoints mentioned above exist on the sovereign territory of countries other than either China or the United States. The Suez Canal belongs, as we have so recently been reminded, to Egypt. The Straits of Hormuz separate the Gulf states from Iran. The Straits of Malacca, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. For the United States to blockade any of these sea routes without the consent of the countries involved would be an act of war, and doubly so if it involved seizing neutral shipping.

This is where the limited nature of Chinese objectives and the Chinese propaganda campaign (which I wrote about here) will come into play.  While nations such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are U.S. allies, and might if it was a choice between Chinese world domination and a continuation of the status quo, decide to align with America, they certainly have no reason to destroy their economies, their relations with one of their greatest investors, and risk becoming warzones to involve themselves in what is at most a Sino-American affair, and at worst an internal Chinese one–the status of Taiwan. All of these nations recognize the PRC as the sovereign government over all of China, including Taiwan, and many have dubious democratic records of their own.

In the event of conflict over the Taiwan strait, therefore, America’s overwhelming superiority on a global level would quickly be neutralized by the rapid and firm declarations of neutrality that would emanate from virtually every government on the entire globe. If the U.S. were to nevertheless try to turn the situation into a global conflict (where America has the advantage), it would likely trigger a global economic crisis and create enormous pressure from more or less the entire world to settle the conflict. “Settling” would almost certainly be Beijing’s terms.

Fundamentally, therefore, any military conflict over Taiwan will have to be won or lost in the Taiwan strait. The Communist government in Beijing grasps this, and its strategy is heavily focused not on winning a global war but on winning a war along the coast. Here, again, the People’s Liberation Army would face a logistical challenge invading Taiwan, which, after all, is an island. Amphibious landings are notoriously risky, and the straits are not known for the calmness of their waters. Again, however, Beijing does not actually need to invade Taiwan to “defeat” the United States. It merely needs to destroy the American forces between Taiwan and the mainland.

In practice, that would mean defeating the U.S. 7^th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan, a formidable force including five aircraft carriers. This would be no easy task on the high seas, where even the rapidly expanded Chinese Navy would stand little chance. That is why the battle would not be fought on the high seas but rather near the coast of the Chinese province of Fujian. As a consequence, American naval forces would be faced with confronting Chinese land-based forces.

This would not be a fair fight. U.S. weapon systems are vastly more advanced, but military history teaches us that periods pass in which either defense or offense are more advantageous given the technology available. In World War I, the onset of the machine gun and artillery provided the defense with an overwhelming advantage which was only overturned with the development of airpower and motorized transport in the Second World War. In the modern era, the rise of precision-guided missiles ensures that naval combat (and air combat for that matter) is almost entirely carried out at long-range by missile exchanges. This lesson was demonstrated during the Falklands war, where a mere four French Exocet missiles in the hands of the Argentine Navy inflicted virtually all of the losses the Royal Navy suffered. They were enough to knock a carrier out of action. Argentina had a mere 7 in total. Had Buenos Aires possessed 70, much less 700, it is hard to see how much would have been left of the Royal Navy.

China has invested heavily in anti-ship missiles. While the U.S. Navy’s anti-missile countermeasures are generations more advanced than the almost non-existent British defenses in 1982, there is a fundamental problem, as the National Interest points out. It is much cheaper and easier to build land-based anti-ship missiles than it is to build ships, and it is far easier to resupply land-based launchers in one’s own territory than it is to resupply anti-missile systems onboard ships at sea. The Defense Department estimated in 2019 that the PRC had as many as 1,500 super-sonic mid-range anti-ship missiles, noting that “China’s broad range of ASCMs and launch platforms as well as submarine-launched torpedoes and naval mines allow the [Chinese Navy] to create an increasingly lethal, multiaccess threat against an adversary approaching Chinese waters and operating areas.” There is a real possibility that with current trends, China will, to put it bluntly, be able to shoot the U.S. Navy out of anti-missile ammunition, at which point our fleet would be sitting ducks.

There are, of course, ways of countering these advantages. The easiest would be for the U.S. military to destroy Chinese launchers on the ground. But here, politics will rear its ugly head. While militarily sensible if not vital, launching strikes on Chinese weapon systems on the soil of the Chinese mainland before they open fire would be politically impossible. It would be an act of war and aggression. As such, American military countermeasures will be limited by the need to allow the PRC to strike first.

Furthermore, while the Chinese will be able to operate from both land and sea, American forces will likely find their options limited. South Korea is unlikely to wish for its territory to be used for attacks on Chinese targets, not least out of fear of retaliation either directly or politically after any conflict. Even the attitude of Japan will be uncertain. While a U.S. ally, Japan’s economic lifelines run through the sea lanes along China’s coast. Becoming a combatant would make Japanese shipping vessels fair game, and unlike U.S. warships, Japanese merchantmen lack any missile defense systems. It would not be a shock if a Japanese government suddenly discovered “constitutional” obstacles to allowing American forces based in Japan to operate in defense of Taiwan, obstacles that would be unable to be resolved without a meeting of the Diet, which would be conveniently indisposed for unclear reasons. The United States Navy might find itself effectively evicted from its major regional bases (outside of Guam) on day one of any conflict, if not before.

The only territory which would likely not have objections to American forces operating against China would be Taiwan itself, but here the diplomatic and political circumstances make basing American forces on the island prior to the outbreak of fighting difficult if not impossible.

It is worth noting that these circumstances combine to create a “no-lose” situation for China. If China were to engage in this sort of conflict, the sole goal would be to defeat or destroy the U.S. 7^th Fleet. If China were to fail, the political and economic interests of both regional powers and major states in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America would ensure that the United States would come under enormous pressure to accept a cease-fire rather than taking the war to the Chinese mainland. This would leave China free to try again at a future date while using economic and political leverage to mitigate any diplomatic fallout. The U.S. would have no plan for any sort of follow-up other than merely surviving.

By contrast, if China were to eliminate the 7^th Fleet, the incentives that would lead Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other regional states to seek neutrality in the initial conflict would shift to causing them to seek accommodation with Beijing. They would step in to mediate so as to avert a “total” collapse of the American position in the region, most likely by offering a settlement whereby Taiwan would accept Chinese sovereignty and Beijing would “allow” an autonomous government to continue. Beijing would have every reason to offer such a settlement in the circumstances. Having destroyed the U.S. 7^th Fleet in the Taiwan Strait, Beijing would have demonstrated to the Taiwanese that the PRC could invade whenever it chose. Therefore there would no longer be a need to actually do so in order to achieve the desired collaboration. Beijing would, of course, demand Taiwan’s total disarmament and an agreement that Taipei would conduct future foreign relations solely through Beijing. Through such “generosity”, the CCP could ensure that Taiwan could be gobbled up at any convenient moment in the future while also reassuring “former” American allies in the region and allowing a defeated Washington to save face. It is hard to see how an American administration could resist pressure to accept such terms.

It is this “win-win” or at least a “win-not lose” situation for China that makes the position of Taiwan so dangerous. While the United States could easily defeat China in World War III, the dynamics of any conflict over Taiwan will be very different. In fact, they risk conspiring to ensure that the United States would be forced to fight any such conflict with one, if not both, hands tied behind its back.

You Have to Read This Letter

A New York father pulls his daughter out of Brearley with a message to the whole school. Is the dam starting to break?

Bari WeissApr 161,091534

I was planning to publish a roundup today of the many thoughtful responses to Paul Rossi’s essay. I’m going to save that post for Sunday, because I was just sent this letter that has my jaw on the floor. It was written by a Brearley parent named Andrew Gutmann.

If you don’t know about Brearley, it’s a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It costs $54,000 a year and prospective families apparently have to take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission. (In the course of my reporting for this piece I spoke to a few Brearley parents.)

Gutmann chose to pull his daughter, who has been in the school since kindergarten, and sent this missive to all 600 or so families in the school earlier this week. Among the lines:

If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

I’m pasting the whole thing below.

Meantime, I’m going to ask Andrew Gutmann to join Paul Rossi and me for our subscriber-only conversation this coming Tuesday night. I hope he’ll join. Details about that event will be in Sunday’s post.

I promise: this newsletter won’t be exclusively about education. But my gosh is it a wild right story to follow right now. . .

See you Sunday.

---

April 13, 2021 

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents, 

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable. 

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed. 

I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died. 

I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country’s history and adds no understanding to any of today’s societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction. 

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies. 

I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism. 

I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley’s caliber. 

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors. 

l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests. 

I object to, as we have been told time and time again over the past year, that the school’s first priority is the safety of our children. For goodness sake, Brearley is a school, not a hospital! The number one priority of a school has always been, and always will be, education. Brearley’s misguided priorities exemplify both the safety culture and “cover-your-ass” culture that together have proved so toxic to our society and have so damaged the mental health and resiliency of two generations of children, and counting. 

I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books that have been taught for generations because they contain dated language potentially offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (something that has already happened in my daughter’s 4th grade class). I object to the lowering of standards for the admission of students and for the hiring of teachers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any parent with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities should antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist. 

We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history. 

Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think. I object that the school is now fostering an environment where our daughters, and our daughters’ teachers, are afraid to speak their minds in class for fear of “consequences.” I object that Brearley is trying to usurp the role of parents in teaching morality, and bullying parents to adopt that false morality at home. I object that Brearley is fostering a divisive community where families of different races, which until recently were part of the same community, are now segregated into two. These are the reasons why we can no longer send our daughter to Brearley. 

Over the past several months, I have personally spoken to many Brearley parents as well as parents of children at peer institutions. It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearley’s antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous. Many believe, as I do, that these policies will ultimately destroy what was until recently, a wonderful educational institution. But as I am sure will come as no surprise to you, given the insidious cancel culture that has of late permeated our society, most parents are too fearful to speak up. 

But speak up you must. There is strength in numbers and I assure you, the numbers are there. Contact the administration and the Board of Trustees and demand an end to the destructive and anti-intellectual claptrap known as antiracism. And if changes are not forthcoming then demand new leadership. For the sake of our community, our city, our country and most of all, our children, silence is no longer an option. 

Respectfully,

Andrew Gutmann

The midnight ride of Paul ReverePaul Revere, a renowned silversmith, is better remembered as a folk hero of the American Revolution who this night in 1775 made a dramatic ride on horseback to warn Boston-area residents of an imminent attack by British troops.© SuperStock

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Home | Wire | The Interesting Case of the Zaïre—the Question MMT Cannot Answer

The Interesting Case of the Zaïre—the Question MMT Cannot Answer

04/16/2021Eric Nies

The zaïre lived an interesting life.

The zaïre was the basic unit of currency for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Zaire (it’s back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; I’ll just call it Zaire for ease) from 1967 until 1997. Seventy-three of the 79 series of zaïre banknotes featured Ziarian dictator, CIA stooge, and world champion kleptocrat Joseph-Desire Mobuto.

For its first two decades, the zaïre was surprisingly stable as far as Sub-Saharan currencies go. Between 1967 and 1987, the inflation vis-à-vis the dollar was only 98 percent. But then, things took a turn.

The Zairian economy had managed to stay afloat during decades of kleptomania, nepotism, and military spending by Mobuto and his cronies due to Western Aid and high prices for the various minerals mined in the Eastern Congo basin. Beginning around 1990, the combination of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, falling copper prices, and deeper administrative ineptitude buffeted the economy.

As Gerard Prunier, French journalist and author of the excellent Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, explains:

From sickly, the Ziarian economy turned terminal…. Because imports remained at a fairly high level for some time while exports declined, the external debt had risen to $12.8 billion by 1996, representing 233 percent of GDP, or 924 percent of export capacity …

Perhaps the most preoccupying effect of this collapse was the quasi-disappearance of the monetary system. With inflation rate that the IMF calculated at an average of 2,000 percent during the 1900s, prices shot up in an insane way.

The Zairian consumer price index moved from 100 in 1990 to 4,130 in 1992 to just under 2,000,000 in 1993. Prunier continues:

The government started to print money as fast as it could, simply to keep a certain amount of fiduciary currency irrigating the economy. Bills were printed in ever higher denominations and put into circulation as fast as possible, and their rapidly shrinking real purchasing value would then wipe them off the market in a way that make even the German hyperinflation of the 1920s look mild In December 1992 the system finally imploded: the Z 5 million bill was refused by everybody and had a zero life span. The government then tried to force it through by paying soldiers’ salaries [with the inflated bills] but the army rioted when its money was refused in the shops.

So far it reads like one of the many hyperinflations throughout history. But then things get interesting. Mobuto, in a panic, demonetized the zaïre and issued the new zaïre, with an initial exchange rate of 1 new zaïre = 3,000,000 old zaïre.

A nation issuing new currency to attempt to staunch an inflationary hemorrhage is nothing new; Brazil did the same thing in the 1990s. However, the new zaïre suffered from the same hyperinflative tendencies as its predecessor except that in certain areas of Zaire the old zaïre resurfaced and began to be used again as a medium of exchange. For instance,

Kasai refused the new currency and kept using the old one, which regained a certain value simply by not being printed anymore.

In other words, even though the government and its central bank ruled that the old zaïre was without value and the full faith and credit of the Zairian government backed the new zaïre, the only currency with any value was the old zaïre—and the value had nothing to do with any fiat issued by the government, but instead the understanding of a sector of the population that because the old zaïre was no longer being printed, it could act as a reasonably safe store of value.

Finally, by 1994, the financial sector was operating entirely with foreign currencies. Meanwhile, Prunier reports,

As for the Congolese population … its tax burden increased out of all proportion, reaching a punishing rate of 7.5 percent of GNP outside the oil and mining levies.

The case of the zaïre provides strong anecdotal evidence discounting the fiat currency-obsessed Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”).

MMT, which is growing in popularity, takes to the logical extreme the concept of fiat money, even to the point that proponents have argued government-issued currency is not subject to market forces and can be issued indefinitely. A fundamental aspect of MMT is the tenet that a central bank can always control inflation by pulling its own fiat currency from circulation by taxation. Thus, proponents such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Bernie Sanders advisor Stephanie Kelton claim neither inflation nor budget deficits are a significant concern.

MMT proponents have attempted to contest the arguments by such economists as Larry Summers that MMT is simply a recipe for hyperinflation by pointing out that a primary focus of MMT is keeping inflation in check by taxation (to reduce “excess demand”) and fiscal—as opposed to monetary—policy (such as an eternal zero Fed discount rate). But this is exactly where the zaïre is so relevant.

A basic presumption of MMT is that the government can keep control of “its” money—that through any number of tools, it can control inflation fiscally and thus print whatever money it needs for the here and now without the classical economic concern about hyperinflation. But fiat currency (all currency actually) only has value if it is perceived to have value, and a central bank cannot switch that subjective valuation on and off at will. Consider again what happened in Zaire:

(1) Due to internal and external forces, the corrupt government ran out of money and it turned on the presses. This was not due to the evil corporate bogeyman some MMT proponents blame, but simple increase in the money supply.

(2) Inflation and then hyperinflation hit to the point that the zaïre was virtually useless. The government’s attempt to prop up the zaïre, literally at gunpoint, failed as did a “punishing rate” of taxation—which MMT proponents argue is a primary tool to stop inflation.

(3) The central bank issued the new new zaïre and backed it while demonetizing the old zaïre. However, the government fiat meant nothing to the populace, who deemed the new zaïre worthless.

(4) Meanwhile, the demonetized zaïre, having been left for dead, was suddenly resurrected. There is no evidence I can find of any centralizing or guiding effort behind the choice of some Zairians to begin using the old zaïre again; rather, it appears to have been a spontaneous market reaction and people realized the presses had stopped, and with it, inflation.

The question MMT simply cannot answer is what happens when, due to monetary and fiscal gymnastics, the consumer simply stops trusting or using the currency. The Zairian central bank could not tax the populace enough to reduce “aggregate demand,” and its attempts to force a new currency on the populace immediately failed. Meanwhile, the older currency, which the government had specifically disavowed, was given value by the people—at least for a while. Under MMT tenets, this should not have happened; indeed, it should be impossible. And yet, it happened all the same.

Originally published at Disinthrallment. 

Author:

Eric Nies

Eric John Nies is an attorney who lives in the Mountain West. He enjoys history, Korean cinema, and progressive rock. He writes for Disinthrallment and Beneath the Lamp.

Thomas Sowell grew up in Harlem, served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War.. graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, Masters from Columbia U…Economist,

Social Theorist, Philosopher, Author…Senior Fellow. Hoover Institution, Stanford University… National Humanities Medal… Francis Boyer Award… 



   
   
   

   
   
   
   

   
   
   

   
   

   
   
   

   
   
   


MANY COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES ARE OPENLY OPPOSED TO PERMITTING MR. SOWELL TO LECTURE THEIR STUDENTS AND FACULTY.

I WONDER WHY ?????

A new financial system aka the quantum financial system QFS

January 30, 2021inBlog, Dinar Guru, Dinar News, USA, World

https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-5797073542730135&output=html&h=280&slotname=1725182775&adk=3339354019&adf=2589558187&pi=t.ma~as.1725182775&w=610&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1616020154&rafmt=1&psa=1&format=610×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&fwrattr=true&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&dt=1616020160163&bpp=3&bdt=188&idt=302&shv=r20210316&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3Da49ee8c9f3aa9646-22afc5bcebc600bf%3AT%3D1616020125%3ART%3D1616020125%3AS%3DALNI_MbHUn6mqSe1eQYGb0DJoZ7-Pvw-FQ&prev_fmts=0x0%2C305x250%2C0x0%2C728x90&nras=1&correlator=3558019581315&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1036039418.1616020130&ga_sid=1616020160&ga_hid=991200720&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-360&u_his=3&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=824&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=455&ady=791&biw=1519&bih=722&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=31060288%2C44739387&oid=3&pvsid=282741076996334&pem=111&wsm=1&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1920&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C824%2C1536%2C722&vis=1&rsz=%7Co%7CEebr%7C&abl=NS&pfx=0&fu=8320&bc=31&ifi=4&uci=a!4&btvi=2&fsb=1&xpc=824jdQYQKw&p=https%3A//dinartimes.com&dtd=310What is quantum financial system QFS?

QFS literal meaning is Quantum Financial System, which is an advanced financial system launched to eradicate the cabal and banksters monopoly on monetary system and for that purpose, a system comprises of Artificial Intelligence and complex computer programs fully backed by banks is needed. Quantum Financial System would be a break through in the world of banking which lead to a new era of banking QFS will not be influenced by Government policies, rather it will be entirely backed by tangible assets like Gold, Platinum, Oil and will not be based upon mere piece of papers which have no evidentiary value.

QFS can be called the modern era Barter System in which you have to give valuable in order to receive valuable. The current world financial system is based on the principle in which your money is backed by debt which already been taken from you with high interest rates and in this way world economy is flowing which is serving only one purpose, filling pockets of handful families. There are chances that if the QFS will launch then all the indebted countries will be able to reimburse all the debts by exporting their natural minerals and resources. If we have a look at the current situation of Iraq then beneath the ice, we will come to know that due to massive debts of Iraq, it is quite tough for them to launch RV because a country simply cannot revalue its currency when it is in debt. Contrary to that if you repay all you are owing with interest then it is quite possible to enhance you exports which will revalue your currency. Iraq is a land which have Natural Oil worth trillions of Dollars and do you know folks that due to this only reason, Iraq is still on 5^th number in gold reserves despite of all odd. In the Iraqi Dinar community the gurus are of opinion that this is a pragmatic approach towards the RV of Iraqi Dinar.

QFS will Revalue recessive currencies

Initiation of QFS is essential for investors of Recessive currencies as the QFS is the only solution which will ascertain that these recessive currencies will be Revalued without influence of Dominant currencies. In the due process of QFS, the world economies will be entered into a new era which will distinctly opt for the barter system and the countries which are backed by enough natural valuable assets will have a certain opportunity to make their currency dominant in the Financial markets.

Another rumor which comes from the investment resource is that the China was the first to initiate the Quantum Financial System by initiating the Digital Currency Electronic Payment. As an investor of US Dollar my concern is regarding the future of US Dollar after the initiation of QFS.

QFS and its effects on US Dollarhttps://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-5797073542730135&output=html&h=280&slotname=1725182775&adk=3008447721&adf=2577865446&pi=t.ma~as.1725182775&w=610&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1616020154&rafmt=1&psa=1&format=610×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&fwrattr=true&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&dt=1616020160166&bpp=2&bdt=191&idt=338&shv=r20210316&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3Da49ee8c9f3aa9646-22afc5bcebc600bf%3AT%3D1616020125%3ART%3D1616020125%3AS%3DALNI_MbHUn6mqSe1eQYGb0DJoZ7-Pvw-FQ&prev_fmts=0x0%2C305x250%2C0x0%2C728x90%2C610x280&nras=1&correlator=3558019581315&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1036039418.1616020130&ga_sid=1616020160&ga_hid=991200720&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-360&u_his=3&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=824&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=455&ady=2103&biw=1519&bih=722&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=31060288%2C44739387&oid=3&pvsid=282741076996334&pem=111&wsm=1&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1920&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C824%2C1536%2C722&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CEebr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=8320&bc=31&ifi=5&uci=a!5&btvi=3&fsb=1&xpc=9q5z2jp3Lp&p=https%3A//dinartimes.com&dtd=344

It is surprising that US Dollar index is rising with every passing week despite of this pandemic and is dominating over other major currencies like Yuan and Euro. The Iraqi Dinar can be benefited from the rising index of the US Dollar, if its economy would not be relying on the Oil and its economy would be stable. There are two major reasons of rising index of US Dollar. First is Federal Reserve as it is pushing trillions of Dollars into the financial system in order to enhance liquidity in the foreign financial markets and central banks to vanquish Yuan and securing the place for its greenback. Secondly the sanctions on Chinese products is starting to play its part in the demand of US Dollar.  

But as far as QFS concerns, QFS will certainly hit the US Dollar and will control its artificial fluctuations which only give benefits to the Wall Street giant Dollar investors who are accustomed to make millions from single investments by manipulating the US Dollar fluctuations.

China play in Digital Dominance

It is also important to look at the economic war between China and US on the Digital Currency Electronic Payment. Before the wave of Coronavirus, China has launched its first automated payment system formally named DECP which will be based on their currency Renminbi Yuan. The purpose of DECP was to enhance transactions outside China and bypassing the US transactional and financial system which is standing on the US Dollar. Now that the US has controlled the China economic and strictly laying down numerous restrictions on its trade and economy. The latest update is that Federal Reserve is working on digital dollar wallets which will be initially used for the stimulus package amount transfers as most US citizens do not have access to banks for cash deposits and withdrawals. But in the next stage it will be used for the international trade & transactions. All these signs are directing towards the QFS launch. While in this play US is dominating and US Dollar will remain a major player but our advice to all of our investment seekers and followers is that despite of all these strong grounds, US Dollar is still a piece of paper and we strongly urge you to transform your savings and assets into Valuable tangible assets like Gold, Platinum and Silver. The value of these assets has been undeniable since the beginning of times and will remain valued till the end of times.

Prophecies on QFShttps://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-5797073542730135&output=html&h=280&slotname=1725182775&adk=3008447721&adf=1829361778&pi=t.ma~as.1725182775&w=610&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1616020154&rafmt=1&psa=1&format=610×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&fwrattr=true&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&adsid=ChEI8NHGggYQu-GA4KHv07_3ARIvAGUeza47rYSn8Y_pahFvpBs89ZeZh2pu7AfyL6RhznHeMh8P0W2_ejlDKWTmD7s&dt=1616020160168&bpp=2&bdt=193&idt=403&shv=r20210316&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3Da49ee8c9f3aa9646-22afc5bcebc600bf%3AT%3D1616020125%3ART%3D1616020125%3AS%3DALNI_MbHUn6mqSe1eQYGb0DJoZ7-Pvw-FQ&prev_fmts=0x0%2C305x250%2C0x0%2C728x90%2C610x280%2C610x280%2C305x250%2C1519x722&nras=2&correlator=3558019581315&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1036039418.1616020130&ga_sid=1616020160&ga_hid=991200720&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-360&u_his=3&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=824&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=455&ady=3307&biw=1519&bih=722&scr_x=0&scr_y=425&eid=31060288%2C44739387&oid=3&psts=AGkb-H-nupvTs9c9cPT785Ra6kQonZ2T7H19jZE7WDry_gdh6OSu60qa4PPi6ErmmyFT5RVNJjAyGIYAtA%2CAGkb-H9qk46yG_kBLOn0C2ZRef3dvettK41vODSAnQv3cM-rxC6MBB5ccvgA4P_o7aS6oZnWsmpGNTPKLs4&pvsid=282741076996334&pem=111&wsm=1&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1920&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C824%2C1536%2C722&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CEebr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=8320&bc=31&jar=2021-03-17-22&ifi=6&uci=a!6&btvi=5&fsb=1&xpc=XkTt0fXeqd&p=https%3A//dinartimes.com&dtd=2009

The battle between these two giant economies and both of them trying their best to dominate the digital currency is going towards a system which unintentionally make the world to roll towards gold backed assets. It will surely be operated on a system which will be control by none of the Governments and Cabal. In the technology of QFS, the AI will be the one to operate all the trades and transactions whether it will be of currency investments or intercontinental transactions between the countries. AI will act according to the balance of trades and will remain unbiased which is the major quality of QFS. From the last decade a US based economic think tank has stated

‘’IF THERE’S A POSSIBILITY TO CREATE SOME DIGITAL CURRENCY NOT TIED TO ANY DOMESTIC ECONOMY, THERE MIGHT BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SOMEBODY TO FIGURE THAT OUT’’.

And this is the era which is surprisingly amending the ways to fulfil this prophecy sort of analyst.

QFS & Blockchain

Now if we discuss about the Quantum Financial System and its interrelation with Blockchain and future banking then we came to know that QFS is dealing in blockchain, shared ledgers and distributed ledger technologies, cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies and digital currencies. QFS is stored and operate on the satellite-based servers based on Quantum Computing. The reason is Quantum Computing is more secure and advance, because of its pattern of processing, the quantum computing uses two or more quantum states together to create another state by firing electrons through semiconductors using configurable pulse of light which results fastest state of speed. That’s why Quantum Computers store far more information requiring less energy and deliver more speed than current state computers.

Will QFS Revalue Iraqi Dinarhttps://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-5797073542730135&output=html&h=280&slotname=1725182775&adk=3008447721&adf=3323640976&pi=t.ma~as.1725182775&w=610&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1616020154&rafmt=1&psa=1&format=610×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&fwrattr=true&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&adsid=ChEI8NHGggYQu-GA4KHv07_3ARIvAGUeza47rYSn8Y_pahFvpBs89ZeZh2pu7AfyL6RhznHeMh8P0W2_ejlDKWTmD7s&dt=1616020160188&bpp=2&bdt=212&idt=410&shv=r20210316&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3Da49ee8c9f3aa9646-22afc5bcebc600bf%3AT%3D1616020125%3ART%3D1616020125%3AS%3DALNI_MbHUn6mqSe1eQYGb0DJoZ7-Pvw-FQ&prev_fmts=0x0%2C305x250%2C0x0%2C728x90%2C610x280%2C610x280%2C305x250%2C1519x722%2C610x280&nras=2&correlator=3558019581315&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1036039418.1616020130&ga_sid=1616020160&ga_hid=991200720&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-360&u_his=3&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=824&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=455&ady=4357&biw=1519&bih=722&scr_x=0&scr_y=1470&eid=31060288%2C44739387&oid=3&psts=AGkb-H-nupvTs9c9cPT785Ra6kQonZ2T7H19jZE7WDry_gdh6OSu60qa4PPi6ErmmyFT5RVNJjAyGIYAtA%2CAGkb-H9qk46yG_kBLOn0C2ZRef3dvettK41vODSAnQv3cM-rxC6MBB5ccvgA4P_o7aS6oZnWsmpGNTPKLs4%2CAGkb-H9b92VNLrarC2ZoVSiCEls5F7eTYt9BEL-f9dOdE23yEvgftpvNsZz5djvsEtXxANczU945h8qQZyYSog%2CAGkb-H-xGVTkVh3u5qVbWJGavQLoUTkKh_X9KBQNOxuhwEDS5D-qCLIni3T1tbo_jiwHSVJqZVFY7VP9jRugXQ&pvsid=282741076996334&pem=111&wsm=1&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fdinartimes.com%2Fa-new-financial-system-aka-the-quantum-financial-system-qfs%2F&rx=0&eae=0&fc=1920&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C824%2C1536%2C722&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CEebr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=8320&bc=31&jar=2021-03-17-22&ifi=7&uci=a!7&btvi=6&fsb=1&xpc=0lihhysD9l&p=https%3A//dinartimes.com&dtd=63202

After the launch of QFS, the Gold backed era will emerge and will Revalue all the currencies which are in bottom state due to the debts. QFS will also impact global trade as it would alter the financial system of the world. The Iraqi Dinar Gurus are of the opinion that RV will be launch as soon as QFS will take over because Iraq will be able to stabilize its economy by increasing the volume of it exports.

When Wise People Speak..we should listen!

Church Ladies With Typewriters

They’re Back!  Those wonderful Church Bulletins!  Thank God for the church ladies with typewriters.  These sentences actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced at church services:   
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The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals. 
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Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled Proceeds will be used to cripple children. 
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The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on the Water.  ‘The sermon tonight: ‘Searching for Jesus.’ 
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Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale.  It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house.  Bring your husbands.
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Don’t let worry kill you off – let the Church help. 
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Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation. 
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For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs. 
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Next Thursday there will be try-outs for the choir.  They need all the help they can get.
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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church.  So ends a friendship that began in their school days. 
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A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow. 
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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’  Come early and listen to our choir practice.
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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
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Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
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The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility. 
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Pot-luck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – prayer and medication to follow.
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The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind.  They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon. 
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This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church.  Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin. 
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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday. 
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Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM.  Please use the back door. 
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The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM.  The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
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Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church.  Please use large double door at the side entrance. 
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And this one just about sums them all up

The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new campaign slogan last Sunday: ‘I Upped My Pledge – Up Yours.’

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Big Tech, the Maine Stream Media, and Socialist Democrats said that Biden won the election…fair and square, however the gloating Newsweek Magazine article outlined how Voter Fraud won.

In addition 74 million Republicans and 36% of Democrats believe that Voter Fraud was perpetrated with Dominion Voting Machines in the 2020 election.  This experiment that was videoed was an attempt to prove or disprove that the allegation that the Dominion Voting Machines did not accurately count the voters’ ballots in the 2020 election.

In this video, a test was conducted to check the validity of the votes counted and tabulated by a Dominion Voting Machine.  Paper ballots were marked yes or no by the 12 voters with an ink pen, then the ballots were inserted into a Dominion Voting Machine to be counted; the votes counted was dramatically incorrect.  One of the voters got so upset at the Voter Fraud that she broke down and cried, and said election results are not true. The inaccurate tabulation of voters ballots by Dominion Voting Machines have obviously been going on for some time, even before the 2020 election.  State election officials are either not doing their jobs, or are intentionally manipulating the count of voter’s ballots, affecting the results of elections (local, county, state, and national elections).

Judge Releases Dominion Audit Report: System ‘Designed’ to ‘Create Systemic Fraud’ | Neon Nettle

In 2017, Congress removed the Home Office Deduction unless you are a business owner. See below for the excerpt, p 35, from The Wall Street Journal‘s 2021 Tax Guide. Available to WSJ+ Members at http://www.wsjplus.com/taxguide .

, Congress disallowed many miscellaneous deductions or imposed new limits on them. These changes generally expire at the end of 2025. As a result, employees can’t deduct home-office expenses for 2020—a benefit that might have been useful to millions of filers working at home during the pandemic. (Home-office deductions can still be taken by business owners.) However, employers can receive a tax benefit from reimbursing workers for a wide range of costs they incurred due to the pandemic. If a firm reimburses its staffers for, say, office equipment or faster internet they need for their work, the company can likely deduct the costs on its own tax return for 2020. Other miscellaneous deductions repealed until 2026 include write-offs for unreimbursed expenses for employee travel, meals, and entertainment; union dues; safe-deposit box fees; tax-preparation fees; and subscriptions, among others. Also suspended is the deduction for investment-advisory fees. This change affects investors who pay fees for advice based on a percentage of their assets, including many with tax-efficient separately managed accounts. It can also hit investors in hedge funds or other funds structured as partnerships, if they owe tax on profits before hefty fees are deducted. Under prior law, many taxpayers found the miscellaneous-expenses deduction hard to qualify for, because total eligible expenses had to exceed 2% of adjusted gross income. Also on Schedule A, lawmakers curtailed the deduction for most casualty and theft losses other than from federally declared disasters. Some other itemized deductions are still allowed, such as for certain gambling losses. They are listed in the instructions for Schedule A. Elsewhere on the return, Congress ended the deduction for moving expenses by taxpayers who aren’t in the military. However, educators can still deduct up to $250 of unreimbursed expenses for classroom supplies, even if they don’t itemize on Schedule A. OTHER DEDUCTIONS, SUCH AS FOR HOME OFFICES Taxpayers can’t deduct a range of expenses that were once allowed, such as a home office used by an employee working remotely during the pandemic 36.

In keeping with my distaste of politicians constantly wasting my money, putting us out of work, and constantly lying and thieving for their own and their bubbas’ benefits, I am wondering if these aren’t good ideas:

The Internal Revenue Code (IRC) allows for the deduction of the expenses for maintaining a home office. Normally, you would have to meet the full criteria of a separate room/space that includes a door that closes and certain other specificities that show that this space is a true office and not just a dodge.

However, with so many businesses being required by the politicians mishandling government and the pandemic shut downs, certain of those requirements cannot be met, e.g., such as putting an office in a spare or even the master, bedroom. Still, the number of households who have had to convert home space to office space, and to buy office equipment or upgrade home-office equipment, is in the tens of millions and since this change was not intended by the employee, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should have to make allowances for these changes. It may not, but that can be litigated and any honest judge will agree to the deduction.

Another concern that has come to mind, is that of just compensation. The U.S. Constitution requires that when government takes something from a citizen, it must reciprocate with just compensation. A federal lawsuit requiring both the Feds and the States that have forced us home with executive orders may be filed requesting damages that include the psychological, i.e., pain & suffering, as well as the aspect of ‘taking’ of our homes and businesses without just compensation.

There is also the legal theory of scope of employment. that when behavior is outside their scope of employment (or, scope of authority, think Cuomo and Newsom), the employee is held personally accountable for his actions. Cuomo certainly was acting outside of his scope of employment when he altered the statistics which showed that his executive order forcing COVID positive elders back into nursing homes was responsible for thousands of deaths, thus opening him up for civil wrongful death actions that would include punitive damages. Considering that the honest reporting shows that he did that in order to help the NY Hospital Association avoid filling their beds with lower paying Medicare and Medicaid recipients and not to help his citizenry, certainly outside his scope of authority, he should now be held personally liable.

Just a few thoughts that may interest you.

Voter Reform?

Over 25 years ago, I started poll sitting, no longer an active-duty Marine having decided that this should be my community service, through the name change to election judge, and when I retired, I was a senior supervisory election judge, read: precinct captain. Y’all keep talking about procedures to protect the integrity of the process, but miss soo much that people who actually do the work, can tell you.

First, either move election days to Saturday, from 7:00 am – 8:00 pm Mountain Time, or make election Tuesday a National Holiday, with, truly, only essential businesses open, and again, 7 – 8 Mountain Time. And, essential businesses means military, police, fire, and medical. No parks, businesses, restaurants, theaters, public transportation, &c. to be open. Shuttles for certain communities, and a set of mobile voting units to visit specific, predetermined and publicized locations in lieu of public transit.

Second, no harvesting. Look at Noxubee County MS before Eric Holder dropped the election fraud case. Read the federal law suit and the judge’s decision and how Holder refused to enforce it. No Harvesting!

Third, anyone who has actually worked a voting site/ polling place, knows that there’s no such thing as a loose ballot. Either the ballots are in a computer with a paper tally roll, or inside a locked black box. If in the locked black box, when they are removed after the poll closes, there are at least two poll-sitters, one from each party, watching, and placing them in a heavy cardboard box, which is SEALED and the seal signed by ALL of the poll-sitters, who are sworn at that point to declare that ALL of the ballots have been placed in these boxes and sealed without interference, to ensure the integrity of the ballots. Perjury charges against every poll sitter in a precinct with “loose ballots” should be brought!

Protocol requires that two judges, one from each party, drive the boxes to the county elections commission where the boxes are unloaded and counted. Once delivered, there cannot be any honest loose ballots. Further, before the polls open, the blank ballots are tallied. At the end of the day when the poll closes, and the cast ballots are placed in the cardboard boxes and SEALED, each polling station inventories the uncast ballots, the cast ballots, and the voter registration books, to make sure that the number of ballots cast equals the number of voters who voted. Again, impossible to have loose ballots.

Fourth, make election fraud +/or tampering a true felony punishable by at least five years in state or federal prison depending upon what type of election was tampered with. No parole, suspended sentences, nul pros, &c., nothing less than a minimum of five years and complete and irrevocable loss of citizenship.

Fifth, require that absentee ballots are by request only. The request must either be in person, or with a notarized statement which includes the reason for the request. And, this means that those states that have gone to mail-in balloting, must go back to in-person voting.

Sixth, registration in person with proof of citizenship, either when one registers for Selective Service, at the DMV, or in person at the commission’s office. For persons with disabilities, a call to the office and an official visit to the registrant, where the official may examine proof of citizenship will suffice should be implemented. Judicial Watch’s report for voter registration in Colorado shows that over 50 of the counties have voter registration roles with between 104% and 154% of eligible citizens registered to vote. Is there any reason other than corruption for these figures to exist?

There are many more ways to prove the integrity of an election, many are listed in The Albany Plan Revisited (www.bn.com/ebooks), but if we don’t want a civil war and its resulting bloodshed, chaos, death & destruction, on our hands, we had better do some of these things BEFORE the 2022 election!

Our NEW HEALTH CZAR below, and I thought John Kerry was the worst possible appointment made by Joe Biden, no longer.

Sometimes the pure transparent adherence to a false, fake and hypocritical ideology can’t help but make you laugh, no matter how sad and illogical the action is. To a logical, rational thinking person, sometimes it’s just too much. This one takes the cake, especially in light of the second pic.

But now we have a true Role Model to base our lives on!

(right click to open the images in a new tab; truth will out)

www.americanthinker.com /blog/2021/02/the_battery_fairy_and_other_delusions_in_the_demand_to_replace_gasoline_powered_vehicles_with_electric_cars_and_trucks.html

The ‘battery fairy’ and other delusions in the demand to replace gasoline powered vehicles with electric cars and trucks

By Thomas Lifson

I continue to be amazed that serious people think that gasoline powered vehicles can be completely replaced by electric vehicles in a decade-and-a-half, and that this would be a good thing, even if possible. Under threat of government action, however, the world’s major auto manufacturers are falling in line, boosting production of plug-in models, and upstart Tesla Motors is now the world’s most valuable auto manufacturer, based on the value of its capital stock issued and in the public’s hands. Mary T. Barra, CEO of General Motors, has pledged to sell only zero emission vehicles by 2035.  That would meet the deadline imposed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed an executive order banning the sale of internal combustion vehicles in the nation’s largest car market by 2035.

Charging electric cars at work makes sense, as it requires several hours. But what if you want to drive on a long trip?

Photo credit: Felix Cramer CC-BY-SA 2.0 license 

GM, rescued from liquidation courtesy of US taxpayers (and bondholders who were cheated out of their place in line as creditors by the Obama administration), may simply be sucking up to governmental power. But Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota Motors, the world’s largest (or second largest, depending on the year). and grandson of the automaker’s founder, has spoken out and called out the fallacy of thinking that this is possible or desirable. [I must here disclose that I was a consultant for a Toyota company for several years, but that all my comments on the company here are based on publicly available information.]

According to this account in CarBuzz:

As the grandson of Toyota founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, the scion was raised surrounded by all aspects of the auto industry and his business acumen is second to none. So when he had some harsh words for electric vehicles at the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association end-of-year press conference last week, people took notice.

The Wall Street Journal was in attendance and noted the CEO’s disdain for EVs boils down to his belief they’ll ruin businesses, require massive investments, and even emit more carbon dioxide than combustion-engined vehicles. “The current business model of the car industry is going to collapse,” he said. “The more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets… When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?”

Studies detailing the carbon emissions necessary to manufacture an electric vehicle reveal that on a net basis, there are more emissions for vehicles bought and used for its expected lifetime, than would be generated by buying and using a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle.

Toyota can certainly make electric powered vehicles. It introduced the hybrid Prius, after all, and has a strong position in that market. Toyota’s mastery of the discipline of mass production of vehicles is such that it could do well no matter what power source is used. But the costs of complete conversion to electricity-powered vehicles are mind boggling.

Where will all the electricity needed to power the entire fleet of cars in the US (or Japan) come from? Despite the fantasies of greenies, it won’t be from windmills or solar farms. They are too unreliable, take up too much land, and cost too much. Right now, it is coal and natural gas that produce the most electricity at the most reasonable cost.  And they emit CO2. Plus, there is considerable loss of power due to resistance in the transmission lines, requiring an even greater amount of gross power before the net power reaches the battery in the vehicle, charging at the user’s home or some other location.  Nuclear power does offer some potential, but how many people want to live near the hundreds and hundreds of nuclear power plants that would be required to fuel the nation’s vehicles?

Then there is the small matter of batteries. The very large batteries needed for electric cars use lots of expensive lithium (and some other rare elements) whose supply is limited, and whose mining requires lots of scarce water. In fact, powering the world’s vehicles by battery is simply impossible, given the limited world supply of lithium, as this clever post by Powerline’s Steve Hayward makes clear. The title gives away the punchline:

WHO WILL TELL THE GREENS THERE IS NO BATTERY FAIRY?

For the longest while I have been asking, “Where do environmentalists and Democrats think all these batteries for our oil-free transportation fleet are going to come from?” It seems they think there is a Battery Fairy out there somewhere who will magically supply the ginormous battery capacity, and additional supply of electricity to charge them, in order to deliver us to our blessed fossil-fuel-free future.

He cites an article in Wired, The Spiraling Environmental Cost of our Lithium Battery Addiction:

But there’s a problem. As the world scrambles to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, the environmental impact of finding all the lithium required to enable that transformation could become a serious issue in its own right. “One of the biggest environmental problems caused by our endless hunger for the latest and smartest devices is a growing mineral crisis, particularly those needed to make our batteries,” says Christina Valimaki an analyst at Elsevier. . .

It’s a relatively cheap and effective process, but it uses a lot of water – approximately 500,000 gallons per tonne of lithium. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65 per cent of the region’s water. That is having a big impact on local farmers – who grow quinoa and herd llamas – in an area where some communities already have to get water driven in from elsewhere. . .

Two other key ingredients, cobalt and nickel, are more in danger of creating a bottleneck in the move towards electric vehicles, and at a potentially huge environmental cost. Cobalt is found in huge quantities right across the Democratic Republic of Congo and central Africa, and hardly anywhere else. The price has quadrupled in the last two years.

I am glad that some grownups are pointing out that the electric vehicle conversion emperor has no clothes on. But that hasn’t stopped governments, manufacturers, and investors from pretending that electric vehicles are our only future.

As Herbert Stein famously said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” We’re only beginning to discover that about pipe dreams of an all-electric vehicle future.

California Is Cleansing Jews From History

Jan 31, 2021  |  by Emily Benedek

The state’s proposed new ethnic studies curriculum is even worse than you imagined.

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In the fall of 2016, California’s then Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California. California’s public schools have the most ethnically diverse student body in the nation, with three-quarters of students belonging to minorities and speaking over 90 languages. Luis Alejo, the Assembly member who shepherded the bill through the 15 years required for its adoption, hailed the law, the first in the nation, as an opportunity to “give all students the opportunity to prepare for a diverse global economy, diverse university campuses and diverse workplaces,” adding, “Ethnic studies are not just for students of color.”

Elina Kaplan, a former high-tech manager who had just stepped down as senior VP of one of California’s largest affordable housing nonprofits, remembers agreeing wholeheartedly with the idea at the time. “The objective was to build bridges of understanding between people,” said Kaplan, an immigrant herself, who moved to California from the former Soviet Union with her family when she was 11. “This was as welcome as mom and apple pie. It offered students the chance to learn about the accomplishments of ethnic minorities, as well as to address issues of inequality and bigotry.”

But three years later, when the first draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) was released, Kaplan couldn’t believe what she was reading. In one sample lesson, she saw that a list of historic U.S. social movements – ones like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Criminal Justice Reform – also included the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (BDS), described as a “global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.” Kaplan wondered why a foreign movement, whose target was another country, would be mischaracterized as a domestic social movement, and she was shocked that in a curriculum that would be taught to millions of students, BDS’s primary goal – the elimination of Israel – was not mentioned. Kaplan also saw that the 1948 Israel War of Independence was only referred to as the “Nakba” – “catastrophe” in Arabic – and Arabic verses included in the sample lessons were insulting and provocative to Jews.

Kaplan, 53, a Bay Area mother of two grown children who describes herself as a lifelong Democrat, was further surprised to discover that a list of 154 influential people of color did not include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, or Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, though it included many violent revolutionaries. There was even a flattering description of Pol Pot, the communist leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, who was responsible for the murder of a quarter of the Cambodian population during the 1970s.

Kaplan began calling friends. “Have you read this?” she asked, urging them to plow through the 600-page document. The language was bewildering. “Ethnic Studies is about people whose cultures, hxrstories, and social positionalities are forever changing and evolving. Thus, Ethnic Studies also examines borders, borderlands, mixtures, hybridities, nepantlas, double consciousness, and reconfigured articulations. …” This was the telltale jargon of critical race theory, a radical doctrine that has swept through academic disciplines during the last few decades.https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?guci=2.2.0.0.2.2.0.0&client=ca-pub-8573325940152694&output=html&h=90&slotname=9473233342%2F1978221825&adk=326744000&adf=772328274&pi=t.ma~as.9473233342%2F19782218_&w=728&lmt=1612133082&rafmt=12&psa=0&format=728×90&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aish.com%2Fci%2Fs%2FCalifornia-Is-Cleansing-Jews-From-History.html&flash=0&wgl=1&dt=1612134212306&bpp=9&bdt=697&idt=257&shv=r20210127&cbv=r20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&prev_fmts=350×303%2C0x0&nras=1&correlator=4556947888427&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1366390411.1612134212&ga_sid=1612134213&ga_hid=1491479009&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-420&u_his=1&u_java=0&u_h=864&u_w=1536&u_ah=824&u_aw=1536&u_cd=24&u_nplug=3&u_nmime=4&adx=205&ady=1964&biw=1519&bih=722&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=21068769%2C21068893%2C21068786&oid=3&pvsid=2225245894906221&pem=553&wsm=1&rx=0&eae=0&fc=896&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1536%2C0%2C1536%2C824%2C1536%2C722&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CpeEbr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=8448&bc=31&ifi=1&uci=a!1&btvi=2&fsb=1&xpc=Jr1X2Ii8ZV&p=https%3A//www.aish.com&dtd=1352

The new curriculum, which will eventually be promulgated throughout the California school system of 6 million children, would “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism … and other forms of power and oppression,” according to the proposal. It would “build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance.”

Capitalism was classified as a form of “power and oppression,” and although “classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and transphobia” were also listed as forms of oppression, anti-Semitism was not. Jewish Americans were not even mentioned as a minority group.

It didn’t take long for Kaplan to realize that the education offered up by the ESMC had little in common with the program described at the time of the law’s passage. Instead, it was a crude pastiche of idiosyncratic neo-Marxism that advocated the end of capitalism and divided the world into a simple polarity of victims and oppressors. The victims, according to this schema, included four groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans.

Kaplan quickly marshaled her skills honed as a nonprofit leader and co-created, with two other women, the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (ACES), to fight the adoption of the ESMC. The effort was urgent, she knew, because since California has the largest school system in the country, any curriculum it adopts will be exported to the rest of the country.

It’s a view that actively invites anti-Zionism into the classroom. It requires it. This is the greatest threat facing American Jews today.

As a refugee from the Soviet Union, she understood the challenge intimately. “The reason I’m doing this – full time and not sleeping” she said, is that “this curriculum is pervasive and all-inclusive. It creates a means of understanding the world that does not allow questioning. And it’s a view that actively invites anti-Zionism into the classroom. It requires it. This is the greatest threat facing American Jews today.”

Kaplan wasn’t the only one upset about the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. Clarence Jones, former legal counsel and speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr., in a letter he wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Instructional Quality Commission, called the ESMC a “perversion of history” for providing material that refers to non-violent Black leaders as “passive” and “docile.” Jones, who is co-founder of the University of San Francisco Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, decried the “glorification” of violence and Black nationalism as “role models for the students,” and rejected the curriculum as “morally indecent and deeply offensive.”

The unassailably liberal LA Times editorial board weighed in, criticizing the offering as “an impenetrable mélange of academic jargon and politically correct pronouncements” that served as an “exercise in groupthink, designed to proselytize and inculcate more than to inform and open minds.” It warned it was “in bad need of an overhaul.”

A group of Asian Americans urged the state to develop a program that would “inspire ethnic pride in all students and inspire them to work together, rather than against one another,” while Hindu, Korean, Armenian, and Sikh groups complained of being left out as did several Jewish groups. The California Legislative Jewish caucus published a letter saying the ESMC “effectively erases the American Jewish experience.”

Several émigrés from the former Soviet Union found the curriculum so traumatizing they couldn’t read it through. Three hundred signed a letter to Gov. Newsom and other state agencies saying: “We escaped a Marxist-socialist system and its associated tyranny and oppression. Never could we have imagined that, decades later, the same ideology and concepts that we escaped, would show up in, of all places … the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.”

They wrote of their shock at seeing Marxist “code-words” in the text, such as urging students to fight for a “truer democracy,” which Marx used to refer to the abolition of private property. They also noted other terms that look innocuous or even enlightened to the uninitiated, such as “transformative resistance,” “radical healing,” “critical hope,” have specific meanings in critical race theory, which the ESMC explicitly directs teachers to use as the key theoretical framework for teaching ethnic studies.

Critical race theory in education, writes Daniel Solorzano, a scholar cited in the ESMC, “challenges the traditional claims of the educational system such as objectivity, meritocracy, color-blindness, race neutrality, and equal opportunity.” Critical race theorists argue that these traditional claims act as a camouflage for the self-interest, power, and privilege of dominant groups in U.S. society.

CRT is not just an educational pedagogy that seeks to overturn academics as we know it, but it is also a guide for activism “animated by the spirit of the decolonial, antiracist, and other global liberationist movements.”

Ethnic studies is a California native. It was born of a violent strike that erupted on the campus of San Francisco State College in 1968, triggered by the firing of a popular teacher named George Murray. The strike, led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front, was marked by huge rallies, bloody clashes with police, and eventually, the shutdown of the campus. It was finally settled when the president of the college accepted the strikers’ principal demands and agreed to establish degree-granting departments of Black and ethnic studies, to be housed in a separate School of Ethnic Studies that would include Black, La Raza, Asian American, and Native American studies.

There is a straight line from the 1968 strike to today’s ESMC, whose text explicitly acknowledges its debt to the Third World Liberation Front. In a speech a week before his firing, George Murray, who also served as the minister of education for the Black Panther Party, declared the U.S. Constitution was a “lie” and the American flag was a “piece of toilet paper” deserving to be flushed. He also attacked Jewish people as “exploiters of the Negroes in America and South Africa” and called for “victory to the Arab people” over Israel.

Many of the 18 people chosen by the State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Committee to create the ESMC hail from San Francisco State’s School of Ethnic Studies, and most are adherents of the radical critical ethnic studies movement who refer to themselves as scholar-activists.

Kaplan reports that State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond admitted in a 2020 meeting with Jewish groups that there were problems with the creation of this group that allowed it to be politicized, and we have put systems in place to make sure they do not recur.

Nevertheless, in 2020, Gov. Newsom signed into law AB 1460, which requires that every student in the Cal State system – the largest four-year public university system in the country, of which San Francisco State is a part – take a three-unit course in ethnic studies. The governor’s decision defied the recommendations of the university’s own chancellor, members of the university’s board of trustees, and the university’s academic senate, all of whom opposed the bill, objecting to the government’s unprecedented intrusion into the university’s curriculum. The board of trustees had offered a competing proposal to require a course on ethnic studies and social justice, which would have included Jewish, LGBTQ and disability studies. Propelled by the momentum of the BLM movement in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, the governor rejected the board’s suggestion.

Several districts in California have already implemented ethnic studies courses on their own, independent of the ESMC. Some are controversial and some are not. Although the ESMC was originally intended for high school students, an entire chapter deals with K-12 integration. Because of the public outcry following the unveiling of the proposal, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required an ethnic studies class for graduation from high school. (The bill has been reintroduced.) Meanwhile, the city of Seattle has already created a proposed framework for implementing ethnic studies throughout its K-12 curriculum. Math teachers will ask the following questions: “identify how math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color,” “analyze the ways in which ancient mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture,” “how important is it to be right?” and “Who gets to say if an answer is right?” It appears educational leaders are all for this. The president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Robert Q. Berry III, told Education Week: “What they’re doing follows the line of work we hope we can move forward as we think about the history of math and who contributes to that, and also about deepening students’ connection with identity and agency.”

This, despite the fact that students in the United States already perform poorly in math. In the most recent survey conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries, the U.S. placed an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among higher performing countries, the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

One of the selling points for ethnic studies is that it would help California’s students do better in school overall. In 2019, only one-third of California’s fourth graders were reading-proficient. Only 25% of California’s total student population had basic reading skills. A suit brought against the state in 2017 by a group of parents, teachers, students, and advocacy groups claimed that “When it comes to literacy and basic education, California is bringing down the nation.” Among the 200 largest school districts in the country, California “had 11 of the lowest performing 26 districts, including three among the lowest performing 10 districts.” In February 2020, a state judge approved a settlement that requires the state to pay $53 million to improve basic literacy statewide.

Almost every article touting the ESMC makes reference to a single paper that showed some improvement in at-risk students who took an ethnic studies class. Thomas Dee, professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, compared a group of ninth grade students in San Francisco high schools at risk of dropping out with a similar group who took a class offering “culturally relevant pedagogy.” He described the results as “highly encouraging” – the latter showing improved attendance, completing more courses, and earning improved grades. Basically, students earning Ds became C+ students after taking the classes. This improvement, he said, is significant, as it means the difference between dropping out and being able to apply to college. Dee calls ninth grade a make-or-break year.

Dee described the classes less as instruction about other ethnicities and how they have succeeded in the U.S., and more as a social-psychological intervention that helps to “buffer students’ social identities in the classroom setting,” which might otherwise “affect their sense of belonging.” In other words, the teachers try to keep the kids from tuning out because of cultural influences that may make them feel they don’t belong and can’t succeed. He explained the classes as aiming to reduce “stereotype threat,” by identifying external forces that contribute to academic challenges and preparing for “how you may be misjudged.” He said the teaching has three defining traits: “an emphasis on student success, maintaining students’ cultural integrity, and promoting students’ capacity to think critically.”

But Dee cautioned that his study was small and its results not easily scalable. He explained that the teachers who offered the classes had spent “years developing them and getting them right” with the help of outside experts. “This kind of pedagogy requires teacher skills of a high order,” he said. He is not sure the ESMC, a huge statewide top-down project, is focused on providing the kind of sensitive, close teaching that produced the positive results.

He is critical of the ESMC’s chaotic rollout, which he characterized as a “hot mess.” “The motivation for ethnic studies is grounded in the idea that historically underserved communities don’t see themselves represented in the curriculum,” he said, a project he supports. However, referring to the team of CRT proponents that prepared the first draft, “The people who have been nurturing this flame for a half century are reluctant to give up control. I’m worried that the way it’s being rolled out might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. By having such a high profile effort, it has become a flashpoint of the larger culture wars.”

“If done carefully, he emphasized, “this kind of teaching can improve student interest in learning. In the wrong hands, it can be feckless and counterproductive. We have evidence of real measurable innovation, but by pushing it the wrong way, California runs the risk of discouraging its adoption throughout the country.”

As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, which fights campus anti-Semitism, points out that all 13 founding members of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) are BDS activists. CESA, the national home base for critical studies, passed a resolution to boycott all Israeli academic institutions in 2014, and the group’s past four biennial meetings included multiple sessions demonizing Israel. “There are a couple thousand academic boycotters of Israel in the country,” she said, “and the largest percentage of them come from ethnic studies. Anti-Zionism is built into the theory and the discipline of ethnic studies, which demonizes Israel as an apartheid settler-colonialist Nazi state.”

But of even greater concern to Jews, she believes, is the singling out of Jewish students as enjoying racial privilege. “I don’t see any way that Jewish students can sit in an ethnic studies class and not feel they have a double target on their backs,” she said, fearing hatred and violence will ensue. First, because they’re Jewish, and considered white and part of the 1%, the purported villains of the teaching, and then through an assumed association with Israel. “There’s a state requirement that you have to sit through a class that says to Jewish students they have extraordinary racial privilege and yet forbids them from speaking because ‘this course is not about you?’ If you don’t accept it, you’re publicly shamed and ostracized – you can’t even speak up and say, ‘I’m not sure if I think that all white people are racists.’”

Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery.

To placate critics, the third version has added lessons about Korean Americans, Armenian Americans, and Sikhs. Two lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma, teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

The Jewish Journal points out that Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery. The ESMC, echoing Nazi propaganda about Jews as impostors and appropriators hiding in plain sight, points out that American Jews often change their names (“this practice of name-changing continues to the present day”) to change their rank in the social hierarchy.

The historical reality of repeated genocidal attacks on Jews because of their perceived or imagined privilege is not offered as counterpoint, because ethnic studies teachers assume the Holocaust is taught in world history class. But next year in San Mateo County, world history will be replaced by ethnic studies. Lia Rensin, who has two children in public schools in the Bay Area, said the students already have no time. “I think I probably feel the way most parents feel – there are already a gazillion requirements. My daughter took two semesters this summer of online Spanish, so she could take art next fall in school. Now you’re thinking of adding yet another requirement?”

Meantime, Rossman-Benjamin said the ESMC creators are trying to reestablish their influence: “The people who wrote the first curriculum who are still very well connected are going school board by school board and getting them to agree to implement the discredited first draft.” In fact, school districts are free to follow any curriculum they want. There is no requirement to use the model curriculum.

Moreover, she said, “while everyone was going through the third field review, they are holding webinars and training sessions, they are recruiting faculty, and training the teachers who will need to be hired to teach ethnic studies.”

These teachers are warning that additional counselors will be required to help students deal with the trauma of the new content, she reports. In fact, the ESMC itself makes this suggestion.

Brandy Shufutinsky is an African American Jewish woman who is pursuing an Ed.D. in international multicultural education at the University of San Francisco. She opposes the ESMC. “It needs to be scrapped. Its foundations are faulty,” she told Tablet, having more of a “political agenda than an educational one.” Her interest is personal. The mother of four, she is concerned that “other states will follow the lead of California, and may have an impact on my own children in the future.”

She doesn’t approve of critical race theory, and she said the LA Unified Teaching District has already adopted a fine ethnic studies program that does not rely on it.

“I’m a progressive Democrat and have been for my entire life, and I come from a family of Democrats,” she said. “I don’t understand how someone who claims to be progressive can say they are against Israel. Israel is one of the most successful countries in terms of the indigenous rights movement. They have reclaimed a culture that was decimated and denied, reclaimed their religion, their peoplehood, and language in their traditional indigenous land. This is something that progressive people all around the world should hold up as an example, not demonize.”

And she has no patience for young people calling Israel an apartheid state. “They don’t know the history of apartheid – they’re too young to have experienced it themselves, and they seem not to have read too deeply about it either. It’s easy for people to imagine that Arabs are all Black and brown and the Israelis are all white. But it’s not true. Israelis are not white, but that’s a lie that the ethnic studies curriculum is built on.”

The State Board of Education will vote on the curriculum on March 17. Comments can be sent to the SBE and Gov. Newsom.

This article originally appeared in Tabletmag.com

What the Bicycle Can Teach You About the Electric Vehicle Bubble

 written by Nicholas VardyJanuary 12, 2021

We were engaged in bolstering each other up, not for money, for we thought ourselves impregnable in that respect, but by argument in favor of another rise. We knew we were wrong but tried to convince ourselves that we were right.
– William Fowler

I’ve written a lot about financial bubbles recently.

Whether it’s the crash of 1929… the speculative land boom in Florida in the 1920s… or the internet mania of the 1990s… I find financial bubbles endlessly fascinating.

That’s why I was excited to come across a financial bubble I had not yet heard of. I found it in a book by a pair of Irish economists: Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles.

This bubble’s lessons are far more relevant to today’s investors in electric vehicles (EVs) than, say, the history of Dutch tulipmania is.

The Great British Bicycle Bubble of 1896

It’s hard to imagine that something as mundane as a bicycle would spark a genuine financial bubble.

Yet that’s what happened in late Victorian Britain in the 1890s.

First, a bit of background…

The bicycle’s early ancestor was a “dandy horse” – a bike with no pedals, patented in 1818 in Germany.

Over the next 50 years, inventors continued to tinker with the design.

In the 1860s, a French hobbyist attached pedals and a rotary crank to the dandy horse. Voila! A crude prototype of the modern bicycle was born.

Alas, a later penny-farthing design with an enormous front wheel proved both dangerous and unwieldy.

Only in the 1890s did the innovations of chain-driven transmission and inflatable tires combine to capture the British public’s imagination with the bicycle.

Socially, the bicycles freed the British public from the tyranny of railway timetables.

Environmentally, the bicycle was a godsend to the horse manure-caked streets of London.

No wonder bicycles soared in popularity.

At the start of 1896, there were about 20 British bicycle companies. But rapidly growing demand was outstripping supply.

A Birmingham-based property dealer named Ernest Terah Hooley recognized an opportunity.

Hooley purchased a company called Pneumatic Tyre for 3 million pounds – a massive premium relative to its tiny profits.

Following Hooley’s brilliant salesmanship, shares in the now renamed Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company soared 1,138% in the spring of 1896.

Share prices of other publicly traded British bicycle companies soon tripled as well.

In 1896 alone, 363 cycle, tube or tire firms floated on the London Stock Exchange. Another 238 were listed in the first six months of 1897.

The British press talked up the bullish bicycle as a historic, game-changing technology. Beginning in April 1896, the Financial Times dedicated a daily page to the share prices of bicycle companies.

A more sober writer at The Economist warned that one bicycle company’s offering demonstrated “a very robust faith in the gullibility of the average investor.”

Alas, investors ignored the naysayers.

And as sure as night follows day, a bust followed the boom.

By December 1897, an index of bicycle-related stocks had fallen by 40%.

In 1898, bicycle stocks traded at an average of 71% below their peaks.

More than 80% of the companies that had participated in the 1890s British bicycle boom would go bust.

The Bicycle vs. EVs

The British bicycle bubble of 1896 has much in common with today’s bubble in EV stocks.

The bicycle bubble and today’s EV boom share…

• A familiar technology that took several decades to reach critical mass. The first commercially produced electric car came to market in 1884 – and flopped.
• Charismatic leaders selling a utopian future to transform society
• An army of true believers with unflinching devotion to “the cause”
• A disdain for traditional measures of valuation, replaced by pie-in-the-sky promises of endless growth
• Endless media hype, with the few skeptical voices mocked or ignored
• Dozens of new entrants to the market selling shares to investors at nosebleed valuations
• Exploding competition leading to oversupply and falling prices
• An inevitable collapse in share prices leaving 80% of the companies bankrupt and small investors holding the bag.

This Is How It Always Ends, My Friend

Yes, the bicycle was a real breakthrough success story.

It helped transform the lives of the British public in ways too many to mention here.

But you can say the same about railroads, automobiles, electricity, radio, moving pictures and the internet.

Each of these technologies also went through the predictable storyline of boom and bust.

The lesson for investors?

New technologies always get overhyped.

They always attract massive amounts of investor capital. Most of that capital evaporates when the boom goes bust.

What remains transforms all of our lives for the better.

As long as investors have a chance to fund innovation, it’s always the same story.

Human psychology never changes.

You can’t skip the boom. And it takes unusual luck or foresight to escape the bust.

My prediction?

The market for EVs will go the way of the great British bicycle boom of 1896.

Valuations of today’s market darlings will crumble. The EV market will crash. Dozens of new entrants will go bust. Most EV investors will lose their shirts.

A century from now, the average investor will give no more thought to EVs than they do to bicycles today.

And one of your great-grandchildren may be writing about the great EV bubble of the 2020s.

Good investing,

Nicholas