Authored by Frank Miele via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Last week, President Biden raised the white flag of surrender to Donald Trump when he offered to debate the presumptive GOP nominee in June and September.

No one saw this coming. Trump had been taunting Biden with his offer to debate “anytime, anywhere, any place,” but it was assumed that Biden and his handlers would shy away from the challenge, both because it represented a significant risk that Biden would implode onstage and also because it would give Trump bragging rights.

Naturally, Trump accepted Biden’s offer immediately, and then at nearly the speed of light, it was announced just minutes later that both candidates would debate on CNN on June 27 and on ABC on Sept. 10.

Until then, it was not even certain that debates would take place at all this year, let alone as early as June. Both candidates had grudges against the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the Democrats apparently thought they could avoid the risk of traditional debates as part of their plan to keep his opponent tied up in court throughout the campaign season.

But that scheme was proving to be an albatross. Despite their success at keeping Trump tied down in court, the results have proven less than optimal for Team Biden. The Georgia prosecution for election interference was undermined by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ predilection for highly paid boyfriends and cash-only getaways. The two federal prosecutions by Special Counsel Jack Smith have been stymied in one case by the Supreme Court of the United States doing its job and in the other by District Judge Aileen Cannon doing hers. Neither case has any realistic chance of going to trial before Election Day.

That leaves the New York State prosecution by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who accused Trump of recording legal expenses as legal expenses and claimed without evidence that the legal expenses were somehow fraudulently recorded to cover up some never-disclosed crime that the jury was meant to somehow intuit outside the court record.

After four weeks, we are close to a verdict in that case, and though there is a chance that the Democrat-heavy jury will return a guilty verdict, it seems increasingly unlikely. Star witness Michael Cohen was proven by the defense in cross-examination to be a self-serving, Trump-hating liar whose testimony, even if believed, didn’t prove that Trump committed any crime. I’m betting on a hung jury, with a reasonable chance for an outright acquittal, but even if Trump were convicted it is likely his poll numbers would rise once again.

Face it, the Democrats who threw everything they had at Donald Trump in four courthouses must have been shocked to see him emerging Rambo-like from the smoking wreckage of our justice system. But if they underestimated Trump, it is their own fault.

In fact, the persecution of Trump for his role as the leader of a populist political movement has so angered Republican and independent voters that instead of destroying him, his opponents have elevated him into a superhero – someone virtually impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

If you don’t believe me – or the polls – then watch the video of Trump’s campaign rally in Wildwood, N.J., where he drew a huge crowd three weeks into his so-called “hush money” trial. That’s New Jersey, where no Republican has won the presidential race since Ronald Reagan! But in the most recent polling, Trump is only seven points behind Biden in a state that the Democrat won by 20 points in 2020.

Moreover, the seeming injustice of Trump being turned into a political martyr by his opponents has resonated with the black community. Minority voters and young voters are turning to Trump in part because they see him as the victim of a rigged system, just as many of them have been. If blacks and Hispanics propel Trump to victory, that will be further proof of his superpowers.

Obviously, the Biden campaign has been well aware of the collapse of their party’s blue wall of Democratic prosecutions, and with Hunter Biden going on trial in two separate federal cases in June, it was time to change the narrative. That’s why Biden blinked and unceremoniously agreed to debate Trump practically immediately.

We learned two things from that development. One is predictable: It is a rule of thumb that the candidate who is most anxious to debate is the one who is losing. Joe Biden seems to fit the bill.

But the other lesson surprised some White House watchers. By agreeing to a primetime debate where he will have to respond to difficult questions without a teleprompter, President Biden showed himself for once to be making decisions on his own. It seems unlikely that his so-called handlers would have allowed their candidate to put himself in harm’s way, so the probable explanation is that Biden went rogue.

And so now, for once, the American public will be able to see the president thinking on his feet, and can assess whether he has his full faculties or not. But standing next to Donald Trump, who is on target to escape his scheduled martyrdom, it’s going to be hard for Joe Biden to look like anything except an afterthought.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) delivered a speech at the Israeli Knesset on Sunday where she slammed President Biden and called for unconditional military support for Israel to support the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

Stefanik and other Republicans have been furious with President Biden for putting a pause on one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs and threatening to withhold heavy weapons if Israel launched a major attack on “population centers” in Rafah, although he hasn’t taken any action as Israel continues to escalate in the city.

“I have been clear at home and I will be clear here: There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel — aid that was duly passed by the Congress — or to ease sanctions on Iran, paying a $6 billion ransom to the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, or to dither and hide while our friends fight for their lives,” Stefanik told the Knesset’s Caucus for Jewish and Pro-Israel Students on Campuses Around the World.

She was referencing a prisoner swap deal the US made with Iran before October 7, under which Tehran was granted access to $6 billion of its own frozen funds that were transferred from South Korea to Qatar.

Republicans claim that President Biden gave $6 billion to Iran, but it’s unclear if Tehran ever had access as the US and Qatar agreed to freeze them again in October 2023, not long after the deal was made.

Stefanik declared that the US should provide Israel with “what it needs, when it needs it, without conditions to achieve total victory in the face of evil.” Despite the Republican outrage at President Biden, his administration has promised that Israel will get every penny of the $17 billion in new military aid that was recently authorized by Congress.

Stefanik praised former President Donald Trump for his “historic support for Israeli independence and security.” Trump has been running on an extremely pro-Israel platform and claimed President Biden “abandoned” the country by issuing a warning about Rafah.

“Today, I stand before you not just as a leader in the United States Congress, but as a lifelong admirer, supporter, and true friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

You see I am lucky enough to have had the privilege of traveling here many times before, but I must confess that… pic.twitter.com/uvoMWOvFiu

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) May 19, 2024

Stefanik also slammed American college students who are protesting the unrelenting Israeli assault in Gaza, as she has been leading the charge in Congress in making accusations of antisemitism despite the fact that many Jewish students are participating in the protests.

“I led the charge to expose this moral rot of antisemitism infecting our supposed most elite higher education institutions,” she said.

Solar executives in China are railing the U.S. and Europe over trade protectionism, claiming that the West should instead “let the best technology win” in their respective markets.

The Financial Times conducted an interview with Zhou Shijun, who leads global marketing for Arctech, who told them that the West ignoring the best technology would “come back to haunt” the renewable energy industry. 

Shijun said that the introduction of trade barriers disproportionately impacted manufacturers of advanced technologies. He also said that companies with overcapacity issues were producing cheaper products. 

“We do have concerns that geopolitical tensions are affecting our global business. What we’re doing right now is diversifying,” he said. He told the Financial Times that China would “always” be renewables’ biggest market. 

FT reported that China dominates over 80% of global solar manufacturing, driven by significant state investment, competitive local markets, and growing domestic demand for green technology.

Despite expectations of strong long-term demand, some Chinese solar manufacturers are increasingly exporting surplus supplies, leading to plummeting prices and complaints from the US and Europe about Beijing’s trade and industrial policies.

Back in the U.S., President Joe Biden significantly raised tariffs on Chinese imports, including electric vehicles and solar cells, and ended a tariff exemption on certain solar panel units.

The EU has been investigating China’s electric vehicle and renewable energy sectors and has reported on state-driven economic distortions in China.

Meanwhile, Shanghai-listed Arctech, which has a market capitalization of $1.9bn, is expanding internationally, balancing local regulations and technology-sharing demands without compromising its intellectual property.

Despite geopolitical tensions, the company views the adoption of large-scale renewable energy as a global trend that is both unstoppable and essential, according to FT. 

The company operates three factories in China and is exploring new manufacturing sites closer to international markets, such as a new factory in Saudi Arabia, a research facility in Spain, and planned operations in Brazil.

Via SchiffGold.com,

The percentage of U.S. adults holding an advanced degree increased by over 3% from 2011-2021. This increase in education is assumed to have a crucial role in America’s increasing economic strength over that time period. The expertise gained from such degrees is supposed to be valuable enough to outweigh the time and money put into grad degrees, both from the student’s perspective and the perspective of the schools and institutions that so often fund graduate degrees. In developing countries, college graduation rates are positively correlated with economic success. This same effect is thought to translate to America’s current explosion of higher education. This belief is held so strongly that the federal government spent 311,000,000,000 dollars on higher education in 2021.

However, a high advanced degree rate is much less strongly linked to national and individual success than universities would like you to think.

The first driving factor for graduate school is supposed to be self-interest. Graduate school is portrayed as a process that directly increases income and happiness. For some degrees, there is certainly a large associated increase in income, but for 40 percent of grad degrees, there is either negative or zero ROI. Most degrees in the arts and humanities fail to even pay themselves off. The time spent working would typically be far more beneficial to students than their choice of grad degree. While some may gain enough from those degrees in personal satisfaction to make up for their choices, taxpayers must feel comfortable knowing they are funding life expeditions that do not even increase the capability to care for oneself. Public education funding is promoted on the premise that the country will be both personally and collectively better off. With many degrees, neither is the case, yet more and more money is always being funneled towards public education.

While the negative ROI of some humanities degrees is expected, the corporate world has also created an inefficient monster through the promotion of MBA degrees. They are entry-level for many positions and they are recommended for workers who have stopped progressing and want promotions. Most MBA programs take 2-3 years to complete, so a significant break from working life is required. MBAs give very few specific skills and are more of a certifying apparatus that an employee is relatively intelligent and has enough resources to put some into an extra project. If they taught extremely useful skills their value would be obvious, but they appear to be more of a status symbol. Their relatively useless nature is evidenced by the fact that overall, MBAs have negative ROI. Most people who undertake MBAs are already high achievers, so the time spent getting an MBA could be used better by continuing the linear progress of their career.

The explosion of advanced degrees reflects a greater rejection of community and trust. Advanced degrees serve as a very expensive safety blanket for whichever line of work they are oriented toward. For people seeking work, they demonstrate their capability in a manner not dependent on any sort of relationship or past professional experience. Employers do not need to investigate as rigorously if they can examine a prospective employee’s course load and institution of choice. Demonstrations of actual capability through doing good work take a backseat to the prestige of the name on a diploma. Real-world experience is not quantifiable, and environments and individuals have a rich interplay that is impossible for any recruiter to fully decode. Graduate degrees remove this ambiguity and rubber stamp someone’s capability in a particular career. Trust and community could help assuage the current overinvestment in graduate school by letting capable workers be recognized for their work by people who know them as more than productivity units. If workers who feel they are ready for the next step must take a break from working to get an advanced degree unless that degree is far more than a certifying stamp, they are harming themselves, their company, and their country. The benefits of transparency created by advanced degrees are far outweighed by the damage done by workers slowing down their careers simply to gather institutional confirmation that they are indeed good workers.

Even if individuals or businesses were paying for their degrees, they would still be suspect, but government education makes it even clearer how detrimental they are. Government education spending is one of the largest contributors to the ever-growing national debt. There are some government expenditures that are generally deemed necessary, but the inefficiency of these degrees is so great that it can be seen across party lines.

While they are necessary for some fields, the current ballooned state of advanced degrees is exceedingly harmful.

Another day, another indication of what a spectacular, snakebit clusterf**k the F-35 program is. 

The latest blotter entry comes to us from the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), via a new report pointedly titled “F-25 Joint Strike Fighter: Program Continues to Encounter Production Issues and Modernization Delays.”According to GAO, Lockheed Martin is running out of parking space for all the completed F-35s that the Pentagon refuses to accept. 

These aren’t one-by-one rejects. Last summer, the DOD put a complete freeze on accepting the stealth fighters until Lockheed fixed huge hardware and software problems associated with “Technology Refresh-3” (TR-3), a $1.8 billion package intended to expand the planes’ capabilities.  

At Hill Air Force Base in 2020, USAF F-35 pilots perform an “elephant walk” — an exercise supposedly meant to prepare for mass takeoffs, but which strikes us more as a self-indulgent, $44,000-per-jet-per-hour circle-jerk (USAF photo)

The worst of the software glitches affect the F-35’s radar and electronic warfare systems, “with some test pilots reporting that they had to reboot their entire radar and electronic warfare systems mid-flight to get them back online,” says GAO. Gee, that sounds kinda bad.  

As the TR-3 woes continue, the jets are stacking up at Lockheed’s facilities. Referencing a milestone that had already passed when it published its report, GAO wrote, “If TR-3 software is delayed past April 2024, Lockheed Martin is projected to exceed its maximum parking capacity and will need to develop a plan to accommodate more parked planes.” Deflecting concerns, in a statement last week, Lockheed said, “Specific details about parking will not be shared due to security considerations.” 

Even while they’re parked at Lockheed, the jets present a liability risk to the government, thanks to contract provisions under which “the government assumes the risk of loss of aircraft ‘in the open,’ which is subject to the contractor’s share of loss and deductible under the contract,” GAO reports.  

This F-35B Lightning II crashed during a landing at a Texas reserve base in 2022 (KDFW via Military.com)

GAO says the software won’t be stabilized until “at least June 2024.” Whenever that day comes, it will only be the beginning of the end of this latest chapter, as GAO says eventual delivery of the backlogged jets will take a year.   

In the meantime, silly taxpayer, don’t bother asking for a specific number of undelivered F-35s. In a lack of transparency that’s surely driven soley by a desire to shield the military-industrial complex from embarrassment, “DOD deemed reporting the specific quantity of aircraft to be unsuitable for public release,” said GAO.  

The chairman of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee gave reporters a strong hint last week. “We know one thing for certain: it’s going to be at least over 100 aircraft stacked up on the tarmac,” said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), according to Defense One. 

Randolph White with an ALL TIME recreation of the F-35 crash pic.twitter.com/N3X08DTY4B

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) September 20, 2023

Already the most expensive weapons program in world history, the F-35 is on pace to cost Americans more than $2 trillion. The number is staggering enough on its own, but here’s some additional context via the National Interest:

The fifth-generation F-22, not exactly a cheap program, cost taxpayers $66 billion. The entire U.S. annual defense budget is under $900 billion – nearly three times the defense budget of China, and ten times the defense budget of Russia. Yet, the F-35 program is pushing the $2 trillion mark.

As the Epoch Times reported earlier this year, a different GAO report had even more unsettling information about the F-35s that are already in the Pentagon’s hands, indicating that “only 15 to 30 percent of F-35s may be capable of combat.”

Lockheed Martin was awarded the F-35 contract 22 years ago — and, just coincidentally, Lockheed Martin shareholders have enjoyed 22 years of consecutive dividend increases. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

It’s not been good lately for the Censorship Industrial Complex.

The machine has been built and put into action over nearly a decade but largely in secret. Its way of doing business has been via surreptitious contacts with media and tech companies, intelligence carve-outs in “fact-checking” organizations, payoffs, and various other clever strategies, all directed toward boosting some sources of information and suppressing others.

The goal has always been to advance regime narratives and curate the public mind.

And yet, based on its operations and insofar as we can tell, it had every intention of remaining secret. This is for a reason. A systematic effort by government to bully private sector companies into a particular narrative while suppressing dissent contradicts American law and tradition.

It also violates human rights as understood since the Enlightenment. It was a consensus, until very recently, that free speech was essential to the functioning of the good society.

Four years ago, many of us suspected censorship was going on, that the throttling and banning was not merely a mistake or the result of zealous employees stepping out of line.

Three years ago, the proof started to arrive.

Two years ago, it became a flood.

With the Twitter files from a year ago, we had all the proof we needed that the censorship was systematic, directed, and highly effective.

But even then, we only knew a fraction of it.

They Think They’re Better Than You

Thanks to discovery from court cases, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, Congressional inquiries thanks to the very narrow Republican control, and some industrial upheavals such as what happened at Twitter, we are overwhelmed with tens of thousands of pages all pointing to the same reality.

The censors developed a belief at the highest levels of control in government that it was their job to govern what information the American people would and would not see, regardless of the truth.

The actions became truly tribal: our side favors banning gatherings, closing schools, says the Hunter Biden laptop is a fake, favors masking, mass vaccination, and mail-in voting, and denies the import of voter fraud and vaccine injury, whereas their side takes the opposite approach.

It was a war over information, undertaken in total disregard for the First Amendment, as if it doesn’t even exist. Moreover, the operation wasn’t only political. It clearly involved intelligence agencies that were already hip deep in the “all-of-society” pandemic response.

“All of Society” means all, including the information you receive and are allowed to distribute.

A vast swath of unelected bureaucrats took it upon themselves to manage all knowledge flows in the age of the Internet, with the ambition to turn the main source of news and sharing into a giant American version of Pravda. All of this occurred right under our noses — and is still going on today.

Indeed, censorship is a full-on industry now, with hundreds and thousands of cut-outs, universities, media companies, government agencies, and even young people in school studying to be disinformation specialists, and bragging about it on social media.

The Good Society Needs Censorship

We’re just one step away from a New York Times article — as follow-ups to their recent praise of the Deep State and also government surveillance — with a headline like “The Good Society Needs Censors.”

Incredibly, the censorship is so pervasive now that it’s not even reported. All these revelations should have been front page news. But so captured is the news media today that there are very few outlets that even bother to report the fullness of the problem.

Not receiving nearly enough attention is the new report from the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of the US House of Representatives.

Running nearly 1,000 pages including documentation (however many pages are purposely blank), we have here an overwhelming amount of evidence of a systematic, aggressive, and deeply entrenched effort on the part of the federal government, including the Biden White House and many agencies including the World Health Organization, to tear out the guts of the Internet and social media culture and replace them with propaganda.

Among the well-documented facts are that the White House directly intervened in Amazon’s own marketing methods to deprecate books that raised doubts about the Covid vaccine and all vaccines.

Amazon responded reluctantly but did what it could to satisfy the censors. All these companies — Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon — became acquiescent to Biden administration priorities, even to the point of running algorithmic changes by the White House before implementation.

It Comes Straight From the Top

When YouTube announced that it would take down any content that contradicted the World Health Organization, it was because the White House instructed them to do so.

As for Amazon, which is like every publisher in wanting full freedom to distribute, they faced intense pressure from government.

These are just a few of thousands of pieces of evidence of routine interference from government against social media companies, either directly or through various government-funded cut-outs, all designed to enforce a certain way of thinking on the American public.

What’s amazing is that this industry was allowed to metastasize to such an extent over 4-8 years or so, with no legal oversight and very little knowledge on the part of the public. It’s as if there is no such thing as the First Amendment. It’s a dead letter.

Comply — or Else

Even now, the Supreme Court seems confused, based on our reading of the oral arguments over this whole case (Murthy v. Missouri).

One gets the sense when reading through all this correspondence that the companies were more than a bit rattled by the pressure. They must have wondered a few things: 1) is this normal? 2) do we really have to go along? 3) what happens to us if we just say no?

Probably every corner grocery store in any neighborhood run by a crime syndicate in history has asked these questions. The best answer is to do what you can in order to make them go away. This is precisely what they did time after time.

After a while, the protocol probably begins to feel normal and no one asks anymore the basic questions: is this right? Is this freedom? Is this legal? Is this just the way things go in the US?

No matter how many high officials were involved, how many in the C-suites of big companies participated, however many editors and technicians of the best credentials played along, there can be no question that what took place was an absolute violation of speech rights that very likely exceeds anything we’ve seen in US history.

Keep in mind that we only know what we know, and that is severely truncated by the force of the machinery. We can safely assume that the truth actually is far worse than we know.

And further consider that this censorship is keeping us from knowing the full story about the suppression of dissidents, whether medical, scientific, political, or otherwise.

Public Outrage Is the Only Hope

There might be millions in many professions who are suffering right now, in silence. Or think of the vaccine-injured or those who have lost loved ones who were forced to get the shot. There are no headlines. There are no investigations. There’s almost no public attention at all. Most of the venues that we once thought would police such outrages have been compromised.

To top it off, the censors are still not backing down. If you sense a lessening of the grip for now, there is every reason to believe it is temporary. This industry wants the entire Internet as we once conceived of it completely shut down. That’s the goal.

At this point, the best means of defeating this plan is widespread public outrage. That is made more difficult because the censorship itself is being censored.

This is why this report from the US House of Representatives needs to be widely shared so long as doing so is possible. It could be that such reports in the future will themselves be censored.

It could also be the last such report you will ever see before the curtain falls on freedom completely.

In the first – but certainly not last – major shake up at a key US financial regulator under the Biden admin, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg bowed to pressure to resign from the bank regulator after an external investigation found widespread sexual harassment at the agency and lawmakers of both parties berated his leadership, capping a nearly two-decade career at the agency.

In a press release, Gruenberg said he would resign once a successor had been confirmed, avoiding an outcome that would leave FDIC Vice Chairman Travis Hill, a Republican, as the agency’s acting chairman. Hill is a former staffer at the agency who has served on the five-member board for about a year.

“It has been my honor to serve at the FDIC as Chairman, Vice Chairman, and Director since August of 2005”, Gruenberg wrote. “Throughout that time I have faithfully carried out the critically important mission of the FDIC to maintain public confidence and stability in the banking system. In light of recent events, I am prepared to step down from my responsibilities once a successor is confirmed. Until that time, I will continue to fulfill my responsibilities as Chairman of the FDIC, including the transformation of the FDIC’s workplace culture.”

Gruenberg’s announcement comes hours after the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee called for new leadership at the FDIC, becoming the most powerful Democrat to seek chairman Gruenberg’s ouster after a report, commissioned in response to a Wall Street Journal investigation, found widespread allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying pervaded the agency.

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said that after reviewing the report and hearing from additional FDIC employees, “I am left with one conclusion: there must be fundamental changes at the FDIC. Those changes begin with new leadership, who must fix the agency’s toxic culture and put the women and men who work there – and their mission – first.” He called for President Biden to nominate a new chair and for the Senate to act quickly to confirm them.

And now, it’s Gary Gensler’s turn, who will almost certainly lost his job – and Senator Karen’s patronage – if as many speculate the SEC is about to approve an ethereum ETF.

*FDIC CHAIR GRUENBERG SAYS HE’S STEPPING DOWN FROM AGENCY

Hey @GaryGensler you are next

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 20, 2024

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Maybe we should rephrase the slogan to “you’ll appear to own things you don’t actually control and be happy.”

The World Economic Forum’s catchphrase you’ll own nothing and be happy was widely mocked as an eyebrow-raising vision of a “sharing economy” future without the implicit agency granted by full ownership. Renting stuff that one needed only for one-time use has long been a market, and car-sharing makes sense for urban dwellers who only need a vehicle on occasion.

But to own nothing still implies powerlessness and poverty, not happiness, which continues to be associated with owning income streams and nice things, i.e. wealth.

Given our dependence on software / digital rights and the phantom wealth of credit-asset bubbles,”how much do we actually own?” is a fair question. Consider the recent New York Times article Why Tech Companies Are Not Your Friends: Lessons From Roku, which was reprinted in other publications with the more accurate title Our Gadgets Are Not Ours.

The gist of the article is that since we don’t own control of the software, our “ownership” of the device is illusory. Here is an excerpt:

More than a decade ago, when we bought a TV it was just that–a big screen that let you plug into it whatever you wanted. Nowadays, the vast majority of TVs connect to the internet and run the manufacturer’s operating system and apps. Even though you bought the TV, the software component, a major part of what makes the product work, remains controlled by the company.

Changes to the product’s software interface and data collection practices can happen at any moment. In extreme examples, a device can stop working. In 2020, for instance, Amazon deactivated the Echo Look, a camera that helped people organize their wardrobes. It issued a promotional credit for owners to buy a different Amazon gadget that lacked similar features.

The less extreme, more common situation is when companies stop supporting older products because they need to sell new gadgets. Apple’s original Apple Watch from 2015, for example, no longer gets software updates and now barely works.

This issue is not new but has grown more problematic as more of our devices rely on apps and internet connections, said Nathan Proctor, a director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization. With computers, consumers could modify their machines by installing a different operating system. But with many other types of electronics with locked-down software systems, from streaming devices to e-book readers, those modifications are typically not possible.

“When you get to the core of it, do you even own it anymore?” he said.

Indeed. Now think about the “ownership” of software-dependent systems such as vehicles and Smart Homes, and income streams running through software platforms such as Stripe. Payment software platforms can block your access to your money and delete whatever illusion of control you might have had by informing you that you violated their “terms of service,” which are open-ended and cannot be questioned.

One’s “ownership” of money and income streams turns out to be highly contingent.

As for vehicles, if the software fails (or is rendered inoperable), your vehicle becomes an expensive brick. So what exactly do we own if the vehicle is inoperable?

Widening the scope of our inquiry, consider our ownership of a house that is mortgaged. If the fine print doesn’t preclude the lender calling the mortgage, then should the lender (or current owner of the mortgage) call the loan, the “owner” must pony up the sum owed or the “ownership” reverts to the lender.

Given the valuations’ dependence on phantom capital asset bubbles, we might say that “ownership” of a mortgaged house is more an option bet on future valuation than actual ownership, for should the Everything Bubble pop and the house value drops below the mortgage owed, then “ownership” means “ownership” of an asset with negative value, i.e. it’s worth less than zero as the “owner” owes more to the lender than the property is worth.

If the house is in a high property tax state / county, “ownership” includes a hefty annual payment which may well have no upper statutory limit. If the “owner” owes $20,000 in annual property tax, the “ownership” is in effect a lease, as non-payment of the taxes/”lease” eventually leads to confiscation of the property as a means of collecting back-taxes.

The same dynamic occurs in condominium “ownership” when common-area fees and special assessments have no statutory limits and must be paid. This article on outsized special assessments being mandated for older condo buildings raises the question, what exactly does the owner own, and what is in essence an open-ended lease?

New Florida Law Roils Its Condo Market Three Years After Surfside Collapse: More units are being dumped on the market because of six-figure special assessments tied to repairs for older buildings.

Ivan Rodriguez leapt at the chance to buy a unit at the Cricket Club, an exclusive bay-front condominium in North Miami. In 2019, he liquidated his 401k retirement account to purchase a nearly 1,500-square-foot unit with water views for $190,000.

But because of a recent state law that requires older buildings to meet certain structural safety standards, the condo board recently proposed a nearly $30 million special assessment for repairs, including roof replacement and facade waterproofing. It would amount to more than $134,000 per unit owner.

Rodriguez, 76, didn’t have the money. So he reluctantly put his two-bedroom condo up for sale, joining dozens of others in the building who are doing the same. After originally listing his unit for $350,000, he kept marking it down until finally it sold for $110,000 last month, or 42% less than what he paid for it.

Every time a potential buyer learned of the assessment, he said, “they’d run in the opposite direction.”

Maybe we should rephrase the slogan to you’ll appear to own things you don’t actually control and be happy. Does that generate the intended warm and fuzzy feeling?

*  *  *

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Every six months, the US drug death catastrophe eclipses the Vietnam War. The vast majority of deaths are derived from fentanyl-laced narcotics, which come from Mexico (and chemicals sourced initially from China), via open southern borders pushed by radical leftists in the White House. More recently, the House Select Committee on China revealed that the Chinese Communist Party used tax rebates to subsidize the manufacturing and exporting of fentanyl chemicals abroad.  

About a year and a half ago, the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America penned a note titled “It’s time to wage war on transnational drug cartels.” In recent weeks, a Rolling Stone report said former President Trump is seriously considering deploying America’s Special Forces operators to combat cartel leaders if he wins in November. 

The conversations are growing louder that if Trump clinches victory in November, the drug cartels behind the fentanyl overdose crisis are in for a reckoning. The first strike? It is likely the US Treasury Department is zeroing in on Mexican banks that launder cartel cash. Today’s sanctioning of cartel members has yet to crush these drug empires. 

As David Asher, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former senior advisor to the State Department on China, recently described:

“There needs to be a top-down targeting approach against the Mexican cartels and their Chinese partners with military force being part of the strategy ala Pablo Escobar. 

“As we approach 100,000 American deaths yearly from fentanyl, we must truly go to war against drug traffickers and designate them as the terrorists that they are. 

“The Treasury Department should sanction and DOJ indict Mexican banks holding cartel cash — it’s hard to believe that a major Mexican bank has never been taken down before. No more “too big to fail, too big to jail.””

If Trump wins, there’s an increasing likelihood that the era of defense against cartels will be over, and counter-offenses will begin. Strike Mexican banks with sanctions, then as the Rolling Stone report laid out, Use Tier 1 operators to take out cartel leaders surgically. 

The problem with this offensive move is spillovers. This would likely include cartel members targeting US tourists and expatriates across Mexico. Then, cartel leaders could activate sleeper cells in major US cities and spark chaos. 

A new cartel activity map of Mexico, published by the research firm Bismarck Analysis, shows that “cartels have regional strongholds where they originate, but only the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG have regular national reach.” 

Biden’s sanctioning of cartel members and affiliated companies has proven ineffective so far as open borders still permit the flow of fentanyl across the southern border to American neighborhoods. The weak, leftist administration is doing very little while out-of-control drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, driven by China and Mexican cartels, is killing a record number of Americans. 

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Second Amendment is vital for enabling Americans to protect themselves from the wave of criminals, drugs, and the mentally ill that are flooding across the U.S. southern border, former President Donald Trump told a raucous standing-room-only crowd at the National Rifle Association’s 153rd annual meeting and exhibitions in Dallas on May 18.

Former President Donald J. Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas on May 18, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Several thousand people gathered in a meeting room of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center to hear from the man who is seeking a second term as president. President Trump’s speech drew loud cheers on more than one occasion from the largely supportive group of Second Amendment advocates.

President Trump told the group that the Second Amendment is “under siege” from the current administration. According to the former president, Second Amendment rights are a matter of public safety.

“The survival of our Second Amendment is on the ballot,” President Trump said. “We need it for safety.”

During his speech on the afternoon of May 18, the New York City businessman, former television personality, and current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination for president came down hard on President Joe Biden. He highlighted the rise in illicit drugs trafficked into the United States from Mexico and crime brought about by illegal immigration.

To bolster his claim, President Trump called Debbie Douglas, a rancher from Edwards County, Texas, to the stage. She told the crowd that her family are virtual prisoners in her home because of illegal immigrants.

Ms. Douglas said she had been forced to make thousands of dollars’ worth of renovations to her home to harden it against attempted burglaries by supposed illegal immigrants. She said that her granddaughter can’t play outside unsupervised and that no adults leave the home unarmed, even in a vehicle.

“One of us is driving, and one of us is looking under cedar bushes for legs and movement,” she said.

President Trump came to Dallas from a campaign stop in Minnesota as his trial in New York appears to be coming to an end. Final summations in the five-week legal battle could be wrapped up as early as May 21.

Manhattan prosecutors have said they have called all their witnesses, and defense lawyers told the court they have only a few experts left to testify.

In New York, President Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal a payment to an adult film actress as part of an election interference scheme. He also faces criminal prosecutions in Georgia and Washington over alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 election, and in Florida over his handling of classified documents. President Trump says the indictments are a political attack meant to keep him out of the White House.

President Trump has claimed that he’s being treated worse than organized crime bosses.

Barbara Tomasino attends the 2024 National Rifle Association meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas on May 18, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

“Al Capone was indicted twice; I got indicted four times,” he said.

President Trump’s address to National Rifle Association (NRA) membership is becoming something of a staple for the group, as the former president has spoken at eight national events.

NRA officials praised President Trump for his commitment to the Second Amendment in a statement on the organization’s website. The NRA released a statement giving him its endorsement for 2024.

“President Trump is under relentless attacks because he is not afraid to fight for those who share his American values,” Andrew Arulanandam, NRA interim executive vice president and CEO, said.

“The NRA and our millions of members around the country have President Trump’s back, and we know he has ours.”

Barbara Tomasino, of Plano, Texas, bills herself as “The Trump Dress Lady.” She strolled the floor Saturday afternoon clad in an ensemble she created featuring dozens of pictures of President Trump.

When asked why she supports him for a second term, she said every aspect of life in the United States has gotten worse under President Biden’s administration. Ms. Tomasino said President Trump proved himself and his policies during his first term.

She says the economy was more robust, crime was lower, and the border was secure before President Biden took office.

Ms. Tomasino told The Epoch Times, “I want him back in office, as do many other people.”