Via SchiffGold.com,

The solution to a problem shouldn’t make the problem worse.

But apparently, California’s policy makers missed that memo.

On April 1st, the state instituted a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers, the highest in the US. With California’s absurdly high cost of living, the policy appeared to make life more manageable for low-income residents. Unfortunately, as the adage goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” California’s new minimum wage is poised to hurt the same fast-food workers it aims to help.

The Economic Problem of a Minimum Wage

The counterproductivity of a minimum wage is demonstrated by a simple analysis of the labor market. Companies “purchase” labor from workers through a wage. The more value a worker adds to a company, the more they will be paid. If employers are allowed to set wages freely, and the labor market is competitive, workers can expect to be paid close to their value added to the company.

A minimum wage hijacks this process. If a worker is worth $15 an hour to an employer, but a $20 minimum wage is introduced, the company will no longer hire the worker, and both parties are harmed. A $20 wage floor means that workers must at least add that much value to the company. For many laborers, this means saying goodbye to their industry and hello to unemployment.

The Effects of California’s Minimum Wage

The ripple effects of California’s $20 minimum wage have proved these dismal predictions all too true. Several chains, including Pizza Hut and Starbucks, have laid off workers in response to the wage increase. Michaela Mendelsohn, the CEO of El Pollo Loco, claimed the company would have to reduce employee hours due to increased labor costs. McDonald’s employees are likewise seeing their hours substantially reduced. In the tight margins of the fast-food industry, where even a small increase in the price of labor can destabilize a production chain, the effects of the wage hike have been exacerbated.

Fast-food workers are particularly susceptible to layoffs because of the rise of automation within the industry. Automation creates a simple alternative for companies struggling to meet the wage requirement. Many fast-food restaurants have already implemented mobile ordering stations, and if labor costs continue to rise, the incentive to further automate will increase. Restaurants around the world have already introduced machines to replace waiters, cashiers, and cooks.

A higher wage also increases the risk of hiring new, untested workers. In service industries, such as fast food, it can be difficult to distinguish the productivity of individual workers. It can take a while to find the weak link at the root of a location’s unproductivity, and this delay equals lost revenue. While an untested applicant may potentially boost productivity, a heightened minimum wage increases the risk of giving that worker a chance.

Proponents of the new minimum wage argue that food chains will absorb the wage increase by raising prices. Some companies, such as Chipotle and Jack in the Box, have already raised their California prices in response to the new policy. However, this is not a concrete solution. Any price increase will necessarily decrease consumer demand, which could harm profits further. A step too far and the workers’ already dire plight will be exacerbated.

If California’s economic and political conditions continue to worsen, many franchises might simply leave the state. While California has a massive potential market, if labor costs become prohibitively high, chains could simply focus their resources on more economically-friendly states. Leading the way are MOD Pizza and Starbucks, who respectively closed five and seven of their California locations in April.

The Minimum Wage: A Cure that Exacerbates the Sickness

The ethos of the minimum wage is to support the poor and lessen wealth inequality. Social class discrepancy is not a trivial issue, as a lack of generational wealth constrains the opportunities of millions of Americans. Children of parents without college degrees are more likely to not obtain a degree themselves, and less educated workers are on average less productive than their educated counterparts. However, the minimum wage increases inequality by cutting off anyone who falls below a mandated productivity threshold. This means removing many of the underprivileged from the workforce altogether, causing families already hampered by societal constraints to see their opportunities shrink even further. It’s like a hospital diverting its care from its sickest patients to pamper the healthy.

Interventionist policies usually sound good. Politicians love to swoon about how their measures will reduce inequality and to paint opponents as money-grubbers who don’t care about assisting the poor. The cold reality is that when the government institutes a sweeping economic reform, there will always be unintended consequences. In the case of the minimum wage, the “cure” exacerbates the sickness.

First, the feminists claimed that they “don’t need no man” and promoted a culture of “strong independent women,” the idea being that men were holding women back from their true potential.  The “patriarchy” conspiracy was an all prevailing issue for woke activists for years, and their answer was to attack and sabotage men and masculinity with a terroristic fervor.  Masculinity, they argued, is the root of all historic evils.

However, as feminists gained the backing of governments and massive corporate financiers the idea of women being “oppressed” in western countries seemed even less probable than it did before.  What rights under the law do men have that women don’t have?  Ask a feminist this question and she’ll have no idea how to answer.  Feminism and woke movements in general rely on the image of being the underdog; a heroic revolutionary effort by people who are fighting to gain a voice.  But woke activists aren’t fighting “the man”, they are “the man.”  You can’t be a revolutionary when you’re the oppressor.

In response, men started giving feminists exactly what they said they wanted:  Equal treatment.  The old days of chivalry and the expectations for men to support women financially quickly faded, and suddenly feminists discovered that men were no longer spending their cash as freely as they used to.  Everything is half-and-half today, and feminists don’t like that.

So, hypocritically, the same woke promoters that once pontificated about women being treated equally took to the internet to attack men who embraced the idea.  The “Sprinkle Sprinkle” narrative was born, with feminists demanding that men submit to feminism while also paying for everything a woman desires as if they are walking ATMs.  Those men that don’t are accused of being “broke losers” who don’t deserve companionship.

Yes, it’s bewildering, but this is the nature of Cultural Marxism – The goal of activists is to break down the target population until they are slaves to collectivist whim.  No matter what you do, no matter how you accommodate them, it’s never good enough because the true purpose is control.  In the case of feminism, being a man is the same as original sin and every man must pay the price for that sin for as long as they live.  Meaning if men want access to women they can’t just treat them equally, they also have to pay.

This philosophy has led to a flurry of online trends, mainly on websites like TikTok, in which feminists give women relationship advice on how to view men as an easy income source while squeezing them for every available penny.  The term “foodie call” became ubiquitous as social media activists laughed about having various categories of men in their roster, some for sex and some for free food.  This is where the now infamous “Restaurant Refusal List” came from; a list of eateries that feminists say women should never go to on a first date because they are “cheap.”

List of restaurants women refuse to go on a first date to is going viral 👀 pic.twitter.com/4myU4nsL0O

— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) October 24, 2023

And don’t think for one second that these internet fads have no bearing on the real world, because they absolutely do.  The ignorance of older generations to the online social ecosystem is one of the reasons why the woke movement seemed to strike out of nowhere a decade ago.  Everyone thought it was fringe and funny until it suddenly began dominating every element of the web and pop-culture. 

The Sprinkle-Sprinkle trend blew up, with scores of women taking to TikTok to complain about how men don’t fulfill their needs monetarily and proudly boasting about the privileges they’re entitled to.  The double standard was now complete.  Women were all victims all the time.  Men were all victimizers all the time.  But women were also “powerful” and independent, yet they required men’s finances to feel respected.  Meaning, under feminism men can truly never win, even if they give in.    

Thankfully, grassroots counter-movements are learning and adapting to the online environment that woke activists have been thriving in, often with hilarious results.  Instead of “Sprinkle Sprinkle”, now it’s “Drizzle Drizzle” – The “Soft Guy Era” movement parodies feminist talking points, taking those arguments and flipping them around to show how ridiculous these women sound.

Men demand equal treatment, and feminists better have their cash and credit cards handy or they get no access. Men are now “the prize.”

Obviously these are all jokes and none of the men are serious, but not surprisingly a lot of feminists are furious anyway.  As the saying goes, the left can’t meme and they’re incapable of laughing at themselves.  

If you take, for example, common BLM arguments about white people and you flip the script by replacing the word “white” with the word “black”, those same arguments come out sounding incredibly racist.  Activists don’t like it when you use their methods against them.  The guys out there making Drizzle-Drizzle videos are using a similar debate technique, only with feminists.  

At bottom, feminism is a narcissistic and sociopathic ideology that is destroying western relationships and the nuclear family.  It is at the core of the current downfall of civilization and should not be taken lightly.  That said, sometimes ridicule is the most effective weapon for stopping social saboteurs.  Drizzle Drizzle, kings.   

Authored by William Woodruff via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Whether Presidential Immunity is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing Shouldn’t Depend Upon Party Affiliation

“Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?” That is the question the Supreme Court will answer when it hears oral argument in Trump v. U.S.  on April 25, 2024.

Legacy media and the ladies of “The View” nearly lost their collective minds when the Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s decision denying him immunity for his actions surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021. However, even Jack Smith, the Special Counsel prosecuting the case, argued that it was of “imperative public importance” that the Court resolve the immunity question before trial.

But forget about Trump for the moment. The issue is bigger than Trump and his legal woes. As the partisan divide between the left and the right grows larger, there is a real risk that the criminalization of policy differences could raise our current state of “lawfare” to a new level.

Several retired four-star generals and admirals, as well as former cabinet officials, have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that granting immunity to former presidents for actions within the outer perimeter of their official duties would raise questions about the ability of the United States to peacefully transfer power from one administration to another, and thereby pose a grave risk to national security.

The retired officials’ brief also argues that granting immunity would undermine civilian control of the military and undermine trust and confidence in the military as an institution.

The “parade of horribles” in the retired officials’ brief assumes that a future president would instruct subordinate military officers to carry out illegal orders for which they, but not the president, would be criminally liable. The brief also suggests that an unrestrained incumbent would use the military to retain power and, thus, destabilize America’s diplomatic and military standing among nations.

Of course, none of the hypotheticals feared by the brief writers occurred in the case pending before the Court. Apparently, they are afraid not of Donald Trump but of some unidentified future president.

To analyze the pros and cons of immunity, however, there is no need to speculate about what some future president might do. We need only look at actual events from our recent history.

Situation #1

President Obama ordered a drone strike in Yemen to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and Islamic Imam critical of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Before releasing the drones that killed al-Awlaki and two others, the White House sought and received a Memorandum from the Department of Justice providing legal justification for the attack.

Several questions come to mind.  Should the memo from DoJ authorizing the killing of an American citizen abroad without judicial due process immunize President Obama for violating the federal criminal statute that imposes criminal penalties for the extra territorial killing of an American citizen?

Could a subsequent President, a member of the opposing political party, direct a new Attorney General to investigate whether the killing of the U.S. citizen by drone attack in Yemen violated federal criminal law? If an indictment is returned against the now former President for that killing, should President Obama be allowed to claim immunity or be forced to stand trial?

Situation #2

President Biden revoked many of President Trump’s Executive Orders addressing border security when he took office. He also halted construction of physical barriers intended to secure the southern border and stem the flow of illegal border crossings and the smuggling of dangerous drugs.

The number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed. Instead of remaining in Mexico until asylum claims were adjudicated, migrants were “paroled” into the interior of the United States and given a court date for their asylum claim years into the future.

The quantity of illegal drugs, and the deaths of American citizens from accidental drug overdoses smuggled across the southern border, escalated astronomically. Federal law imposes criminal penalties on those who enter the United States illegally. It also punishes conspiracies to violate federal law.

So, if the White House switches parties when President Biden leaves, should the new president’s Attorney General seek an indictment against Biden for conspiring with the Secretary of Homeland Security to violate U.S. immigration laws by facilitating the illegal entry of millions of migrants into the United States? Or should those policy choices be protected by a cloak of immunity?

Situation #3

Eager to deliver on a campaign promise, President Biden announced a policy to “forgive” billions of dollars in student loan debt. The Supreme Court struck down the President’s plan and held that Congress had not authorized the Executive to unilaterally forgive student loan debt.

Instead of seeking legislative authority, President Biden reworked his plan to rely upon a different statute for authority. Assume the courts dismissed lawsuits challenging Biden’s “Plan B” because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. “Plan B” went forward and billions of dollars in federal student loans became “grants” instead of loans that had to be repaid.

The federal Anti-deficiency Act imposes criminal penalties on anyone who authorizes the expenditure of federal funds without a valid congressional appropriation. When President Biden leaves office, can he be indicted and tried because his “Plan B” loan scheme violated federal law?

Presidential Immunity Analysis

Each of the foregoing situations illustrates how  a former President could be subject to indictment for actions taken within the outer perimeter of his official duties as President. Never happen, you say? Surely, no one would try to force these facts into violations of existing law. But Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith have all engaged in creative lawyering to bring novel criminal charges against Trump. Apparently, some see creative lawyering as a feature and not a bug in our legal system.

While the former Presidents have substantive defenses to the charges and the novel theories advanced in the indictments may be rejected by the courts or nullified by a jury, should the former presidents and the country be put through the spectacle of a criminal trial?

One of the major attributes of immunity is that it avoids the trial in the first place. Instead of placing one’s fate in the hands of a jury and hoping they will accept one or more defenses or justifications for the alleged violations, immunity prevents the trial at the outset. In other words, if the process is the punishment, immunity avoids the process.

Presidential immunity for actions within the outer perimeter of official duties allows a president to make difficult policy and operational decisions without concern for his personal liberty once he leaves office. It also eliminates the temptation to exact a tit for tat when the next election goes to the opposition party.

On the flip side, the existence of presidential immunity may provide unwarranted protection for the actions and decisions of a president who does not really have the best interests of the country at heart. But the Constitution provides two significant checks on that unseemly circumstance: impeachment and the ballot box. Furthermore, the Constitution specifically provides that upon conviction by the Senate in an impeachment trial the person impeached “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”

It is tempting to favor or disfavor presidential immunity in criminal cases depending upon the political or personal like or dislike one may have for the indicted former President. Republicans get immunity but Democrats don’t; or vice versa. But if we are to be a nation of laws every former president should be entitled to presidential immunity for alleged criminal acts committed within the outer perimeter of official duties, or no former President should be so immune.

The issue before the Supreme Court is one of first impression. While immunity has been litigated in the context of civil claims, no former President has been indicted for criminal acts while in office, until now. In an ideal world, the answer to the question presented in Trump v. United States would remain nothing more than an interesting topic of discussion among law professors.

But if the last seven or eight years have proved anything it is that we are not living in an ideal world.

William A. Woodruff is a retired Army lawyer who, as Chief of the Army Litigation Division, was responsible for defending Army policies, programs, and operations in federal courts around the country. He retired from active duty in 1992 and taught law for 25 years at Campbell University School of Law in North Carolina.

Authored by Fred Roeder via RealClearMarkets,

On a Friday night in March 2011, I stayed at an upscale W Hotel on Lexington Avenue in New York City for $124. That hotel later became The Maxwell, but sadly it didn’t survive the pandemic and is now permanently closed. Today the average hotel stay in that same neighborhood costs between $400 and $500 on a Friday night. The surge in hotel prices, particularly for upmarket accommodations, has caught the attention of travelers and investors worldwide. What led to this spike in hotel rates post-pandemic?

Several factors have been at play for the hospitality industry since COVID entered the rearview, resulting in higher prices for travelers.

Supply and Competition

Competition within hospitality plays a crucial role in determining hotel prices. While it might appear that there’s no shortage of lodging options for travelers, the regulatory crackdown on platforms like Airbnb in big cities has redirected travelers back into the arms of traditional hotels, thereby increasing demand. 

As the Consumer Choice Center has pointed out, 80 percent of properties were already delisted from Airbnb by October 2023 thanks to New York City’s stringent new short-term rental policies. Because of the new restrictions on temporary rentals, which state that only two paying guests at most can stay for up to 30 days under certain conditions (unobstructed access to the whole residence, short-term registration, owner present on site), many families have no choice but to look for a hotel room during their NYC stay. 

Not to mention the massive buying up of hotel room blocks by the city in order to house newly arrived migrant populations. This warps the market for hotel rooms in profound ways. NYC has at least 140 active contracts with city hotels to fill all their vacant rooms, normally valued around $110 per night, but marked up by 73 percent to $190 for a room. Vacancies mean lower prices, but if surrounding inns are full, hotel prices rise for consumers. 

This arrangement may not be what hoteliers had in mind for their business, but it has proven highly lucrative for the properties cooperating with the city in these contracts. 

Closures of smaller hotels along with industry consolidation reduce the number of options for consumers, which empowers larger hotel chains to raise prices. Moreover, high interest rates on financing discourage the construction of new hotels, leading to an even more constrained supply of rooms. All the while, prices creep even higher. 

Consolidated hotel groups have found innovative ways to manage yields and hence increase revenue. This would explain higher average daily rates despite similar or even lower occupancy rates for NYC hotels pre-pandemic.

Traveler’s Tastes Change 

Higher prices are also related to consumer preferences, which have evolved significantly in recent years. The pandemic prompted a shift towards safer and more luxurious options, with travelers prioritizing enhanced safety measures and amenities. This shift, coupled with pent-up demand from periods of lockdown, has resulted in a willingness among travelers to pay a premium for upmarket hotels. 

Consumers also tend to book closer to their travel dates and are proving reluctant to commit far in advance. A few years of uncertainty around travel has created a more cautious average traveler. On top of that, the normalization of remote work has blurred the lines between business and leisure travel, leading to longer average stays. 

People are taking personal vacations and then staying there longer while they transition back into work mode.

Supply Chains and Labor

Amidst all these trends, operational costs rise with minimum wage hikes, labor shortages, crunched supply chains overseas, and ever-increasing taxes in America’s largest cities. The labor shortfall is not insignificant and leaves hotels struggling to meet the high demand for rooms. The costs are likely being passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. 

It’s also very possible that hotels are eager to recoup losses incurred during the pandemic period, driving them to maximize revenue through price adjustments as demand rebounds in major travel markets. 

It’s a perfect storm of industry trends, regulatory pressures on competitors, and consumer behavior driving up the average price of a hotel stay in NYC and other large cities. Is there anything that can be done? 

Ideally, as prices rise, consumers will see a new wave of entrepreneurial competition offering market solutions and testing out new models for lodging travelers. For the sake of all our wallets, let’s hope that happens sooner rather than later.

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

With the November election less than 7 months away, mainstream media outlets are now choosing to misrepresent the current state of crime in the United States, claiming that crime is declining without providing full context or key details.

As the Daily Caller reports, there are two ways in which the federal government measures crime in the United States: The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR).

Whereas the NCVS asks roughly 240,000 Americans whether or not they’ve been a victim of crime in the last year, the UCR focuses on crimes that have been reported to police within the last year and shared with the FBI.

While more people are reporting to the BJS that they have been the victims of crime, the FBI is reporting fewer crimes through the UCR.

The UCR claims that violent crime dropped by 2% from 2021 to 2022, while the NCVS shows the exact opposite, reporting that the number of victims of violent crime increased by a staggering 42.4% from 2021 to 2022; this constitutes a rise from 16.5 victims per 1,000 people to 23.5 victims per 1,000.

Nevertheless, many mainstream media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, Reuters, and The Hill have all turned to the FBI’s data to claim, falsely, that crime is on the decline. All such reports have failed to mention the crucial data from the NCVS.

Even Joe Biden himself has turned to deliberately misrepresenting the facts by relying solely on the FBI’s data.

“This week, the FBI released data showing that crime declined across nearly every category in 2023,” said Biden recently.

“Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which every Republican in Congress voted against, we made the largest-ever federal investment in fighting and preventing crime at any time in our history.”

This directly contradicts broad public sentiment in the United States, with a Gallup poll in December finding that 77% of Americans believe crime is getting worse.

Who could have seen that coming? (here, here, here, and most detailed here)

March will be lit:

1. Reverse repo ends
2. BTFP expires
3. Fed cuts (allegedly)
4. QT ends (allegedly)

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 8, 2024

Admittedly, we were a couple of weeks off, but trouble has been brewing in the banking sector and tonight – after the close – we get the first bank failure of the year.

The FDIC just seized the troubled Philadelphia bank, Republic First Bancorp and and struck an agreement for the lender’s deposits and the majority of its assets to be bought by Fulton Bank.

Republic Bank had about $6 billion of assets and $4 billion of deposits at the end of January, according to the FDIC (considerably smaller than the $100-200BN assets with SVB and Signature).

The FDIC estimated the failure will cost the deposit insurance fund $667 million.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, Republic First had for months struggled to stay afloat.

Around half of its deposits were uninsured at the end of 2023, according to FDIC data. 

Its total equity, or assets minus liabilities, was $96 million at the end of 2023, according to FDIC filings.

That excluded $262 million of unrealized losses on bonds that it labeled “held to maturity,” which means the losses hadn’t counted on its balance sheet.

Its stock, which was delisted from Nasdaq in August, had been near zero.

Republic Bank’s 32 branches across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York will reopen as branches of Fulton Bank on Saturday, according to a statement from the FDIC.

Depositors of Republic Bank will become depositors of Williamsport, Pennsylvania-based Fulton Bank, the regulator said.

You should not be surprised given that rates are higher now than they were at the start of the SVB crisis – which means, unless banks have hedged hard or dumped their bonds at a loss, they are even more underwater…

U.S. Banks finished the year with almost $400 billion of unrealized losses on held-to-maturity assets. The assumption is this wouldn’t be a problem because the Fed would cut A LOT this year but what if that doesn’t happen? pic.twitter.com/fsfMCisEd3

— Barchart (@Barchart) April 25, 2024

Add to this the fact that last week – seasonally-adjusted for tax-season – US banks saw the largest deposit outflows since 9/11 (yes, that 9/11)…

…and, as we showed earlier, absent the $126BN outstanding in The Fed’s BTFP bailout fund (which is now terminated and slowly running down as the term loans mature)…

…the banking crisis is back and now the question is “who’s next?”

In a Friday interview with Howard Stern, President Joe Biden said he’d be “happy to debate” Donald Trump, telling Stern: “I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him.”

Biden’s remarks appeared off the cuff, rather than something his handlers approved, according to the NY Times, citing a top Democratic official familiar with the campaign’s thinking.

🚨 Crooked Joe Biden says he’s “happy to debate” President Trump.

His handlers must be furious! pic.twitter.com/eOS9zm0G0U

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 26, 2024

Trump responded on Truth Social, posting: “Crooked Joe Biden just announced that he’s willing to debate! Everyone knows he doesn’t really mean it, but in case he does, I say, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, ANYPLACE.”

Trump suggested next Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening in Michigan, “a State that he is in the process of destroying with his E.V. Mandate.”

The former President also suggested doing it on Friday – writing “In the alternative, he’s in New York City today, although probably doesn’t know it, and so am I, stuck in one of the many Court cases that he instigated as ELECTION INTERFERENCE AGAINST A POLITICAL OPPONENT – A CONTINUING WITCH HUNT!”

Trump says the lawsuits are “the only way he thinks he can win.”

To that end, the former president said “let’s do the Debate at the Courthouse tonight – on National Television, I’ll wait around!”

Watch:

BREAKING: President Trump has officially invited Biden to debate, stating he is open any day of the week, including tonight.
pic.twitter.com/Y3RRSK853k

— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) April 26, 2024

Via The Cradle

The government of US President Joe Biden has decided against imposing sanctions on Israeli army units responsible for human rights violations against Palestinians, despite initial plans to do so. 

ABC News reported on Friday that a government assessment determined that three battalions in the Israeli army committed “gross human rights violations” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank “but will remain eligible for US military aid regardless because of steps Israel says it’s taking to address the problem.” 

Image source: NY Times

The assessment, which has not been made public, was outlined in a letter written by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to House Speaker Mike Johnson, which the news network obtained. 

The rights violations committed by Israeli forces “will not delay the delivery of any US assistance and Israel will be able to receive the full amount appropriated by Congress.” Billions in US aid to Israel was approved by Biden just two days ago after passing in the Senate on Tuesday.

The violations in question were committed prior to October 7 and took place in the occupied West Bank. They include the execution of Palestinians by Israeli border police, as well as torture and rape during interrogation. 

None are related to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children. 

Yet the decision is expected to frustrate many critics of the Biden administration who believe Washington has not done enough to hold Israel accountable for war crimes. Under the US Leahy Law, Washington should withhold military aid to states committing severe human rights abuses. Yet the law allows exceptions if measures are taken to punish those responsible. 

An informed source told ABC that Israel and the US have a “special agreement” that Washington must consult with Tel Aviv over any decision relating to foreign assistance. The source added that these consultations are ongoing. 

Blinken’s letter states that four of the Israeli army units have undergone “remediation” steps, meaning that those within the units that are responsible for the crimes have been internally held accountable. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on April 21: “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, I will fight it with all my strength.”

According to Hebrew news site Ynet, Israeli pressure on the US helped shape the decision not to impose sanctions on the units. “The reasonable estimate is that we will be able to convince the US not to impose these sanctions,” an Israeli official told the outlet. 

In addition to Netanyahu, opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid both called on the US not to proceed with the decision. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly promised Blinken that “steps” would be taken. 

How we got here: IMPUNITY. U.S. cancels sanctions against IDF units suspected of blatant war crimes. Because Israel pledged to do its own investigation. History show these “investigations” go nowhere except to find excuses; exonerate suspects.https://t.co/HfwJGcOwCj

— Jim Clancy (@ClancyReports) April 26, 2024

A special State Department panel proposed months ago to bar certain Israeli police and army units from receiving US funds over human rights abuses. A ProPublica report from last week indicates that Blinken disregarded the panel’s recommendations for action against the units. 

The Guardian reported in January, citing interviews and State Department documents, that “special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws.”

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels may have launched attacks on two vessels transiting southwest of Mukha, a port city on the highly contested southern Red Sea. 

Bloomberg says the UK Navy has confirmed two attacks on vessels in a series of headlines hitting the Terminal around 1400 ET. 

UK NAVY: REPORTS 2 ATTACKS ON VESSEL SW OF AL MUKHA, YEMEN

There are also reports that one of the vessels is “damaged.” 

UK NAVY SAYS ATTACKS RESULTED IN DAMAGE TO VESSEL

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations confirmed an incident 14 nautical miles from Mukha earlier. 

The Houthis, who support the Palestinian terror group Hamas, have been launching drone and missile attacks on Western vessels since November, disrupting a critical maritime chokepoint known as “Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.” 

About a week ago, 16 maritime industry associations and social partners co-signed an open letter to the United Nations urging increased military patrols on heavily traveled shipping routes. This comes after commandos seized a container ship affiliated with Israel as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz two weeks ago. 

We have diligently published notes highlighting how maritime chokepoints across the Middle East are under threat, including the Suez Canal, Bab-El Mandeb Strait, and Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of all global trade flows. 

The Red Sea disruption is far from over. The United States and its allies in the West are losing the battle in defending the world’s major shipping lanes, as Biden’s Operation Prosperity Guardian has been an absolute failure. 

All of this symbolizes the world fracturing into a multipolar state, one full of chaos. And it will only get worse from here, hence why military spending worldwide is in a massive bull market. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“We’ll certainly never forget the dark days of June 6… January 6th, excuse me.”

– President “Joe Biden”

The plum blossoms are ready to pop here. You can feel your blood rising. The evening sun lingers a little longer every day. Normally you’d celebrate, but not this year of roaring portents and evil juju. History doesn’t stop to catch its breath for a moment. The tiny glowing diode deep in “Joe Biden’s” brain dims a bit more each day (pause) while low men and women in high places trifle with the fate of the nation. Everyone dreads what’s coming.

Which, judging by events of the week just past, looks like a worse summer of civil chaos than 2020 was.

Some entity — say, the checkbook of George and Alex Soros, maybe? — has funded the spring mustering of student mobs in support of Hamas seeking to drive wicked Israel into the choppy Mediterranean.

What you’re seeing, though, is probably not what you think you are seeing in all that. The kids are mere digits in a cultural algorithm playing out as New Age dumbshow.

I doubt that three-quarters of them actually give a flying fugazy about the Palestinians, and even fewer could find Gaza on a map if you water-boarded them.

They affect to be intersectional victims of the universal oppressor, but in so far as many of the rioters are girls of the Ivy League, or comparable redoubts of privilege— little blue-eyed, blonde-haired muffins raised on pony club, Hermes, and artisan granola — there must be something else going on.

That something else is probably sex, which is so problematical now in any traditional frame of a man getting it on with a woman that the American birth-rate is going to zero.

How does a young woman get it on with so many collegiate men vying for gay brownie points these days, or going for the grand prize in transitioning?

Why, it’s a non-starter. So, instead, you go slumming among the savages, those hairy, dumb brutes on twerk-alert, dripping testosterone — illegal aliens, student third-worlders, BLM alumni, hardcore hoodlums. They don’t know nuthin ‘bout no pony club, but they will rut like Bilberry rams until the ladies fall away crosseyed. Affecting to be a lesbian only makes the game more piquant. And if you forgot your birth control, for some reason, there’s always the abortionist.

Any time there are brownie points at stake, you know the game is actually for status, and where status is the game, fashion is the currency.

Thus, the dress-up in Arab keffiyehs, the charming head-scarf denoting allyship with Hamas. Beats the heck out of those flitty N-95 masks from the 2020 Covid nights of roistering in the Seattle CHOP and trying to burn down the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland.

Rioting gives young men of the toxic persuasion opportunities to flaunt their moxie in acts of derring-do, brawling with the cops, dancing on top of cars, ripping down chain-link fences, flinging gasoline bombs.

So much the better for getting the ladies’ attention. Look what I can do! And the keffiyeh accessorizes well with black bloc riot garb. For the muffins, wearing it is great practice for the utopia-to-come when they must don burkas under submission to Sharia. Will Hermes put out a burka?

So far, the spring rioting has mostly been fun for the rioters. Unlike the J-6-21 “paraders,” locked up in the putrid DC jail for years pending trial, the Hamas frolickers are at near-zilch risk of any serious consequences.

Few will even be suspended from school.

They are doing exactly what the schools trained them up for: destroying Western Civ, one acanthus leaf at a time.

According to the shadowy stage-managers behind “Joe Biden,” this will save our democracy.

That and stuffing Donald Trump in jail for the rest of his natural life.

Alas, the lawfare cases cooked up toward that end appear defective to a spectacular degree. It really says something about the true authors of these beauties brought by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith. I speak of the behind-the-scene blob lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Matt Colangelo, and Mary McCord, who wrote the scripts for all four of this year’s big elephant trap cases against the former president. You have to wonder how that bunch made it through their law boards. The current extravaganza in Manhattan that centers on alleged book-keeping errors in furtherance of an unstated federal offense is due to go on a few more weeks. The howling errors of both the prosecution and Judge Juan Merchan are so extravagant that the proceeding looks like it was cribbed from the pages of Lewis Carroll.

Yet, there is near unanimous sentiment that the Trump-deranged New Yawk jury will convict, no matter how much more idiotic the case turns out to be. By then, we will be verging on summer. The college campuses will be shuttered and the youth-in-revolt action will necessarily move to the regular streets. Whichever way the verdict goes in the Alvin Bragg case, epic looting and rioting will commence.

Sometime this summer, I predict, the Mar-a-Lago documents case will get tossed on something like malicious prosecution. Jack Smith’s DC case, kneecapped by SCOTUS, won’t start before the November election (or maybe ever) and ditto the Fani Willis fiasco in Atlanta.

George and Alex Soros will pour millions into box lunches for the kids burning down what’s left of the cities and the demure gals of the Ivy League Left will find plenty of love in the ruins.

The two major party conventions in July (Republican) and August (Democrat) are sure to out-do the 1968 lollapalooza in Chicago (I was there) in mayhem and property damage. “Joe Biden” – really the blob behind him – will ache to declare a national emergency, perhaps even a second emergency after the recently unveiled “climate emergency” supposedly pending any day.

The USA will be in an historic horror movie you could call Emergency-O-Rama.

If you think the financial system, and the US economy that has become the tail on the finance dog, can survive all this, you will be disappointed.

The army may have to step in and put an end to these shenanigans. Don’t think it can’t happen.

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