from Tim Pool
‘She Could Have Been Hurt Worse’: Police Union Defends Officer Who Pepper-Sprayed Nine-Year-Old Handcuffed Girl
Public-sector unions often protect the government at the expense of the people.
[Ed. Note: Riiight…. SIX police officers… All claiming… Okay, ready for this? That they couldn’t get a handcuffed nine-year-old girl into a police car. Thank god she wasn’t 13 years old… You might have had to shoot her in the face to get her in line.]
by Billy Binion
Reason.com
The police union in Rochester, New York, is defending a group of cops who pepper-sprayed and handcuffed a nine-year-old girl on Friday.
“They were trying to get her into the car,” said Mike Mazzeo, president of the Locust Club police union, at a press conference. The officer who pepper-sprayed the girl “made a decision there that he thought was the best action to take,” Mazzeo declared. “It resulted in no injury to her. Had they had to go and push further and use more force, there’s a good chance she could have been hurt worse. It’s very difficult to get someone into the back of a police car like that.”
In this case, that someone was a child—what’s more, a child who wasn’t suspected of committing any crime.
McConnell Calls QAnon-Supporting Congresswoman “Cancer” on GOP, Says Cheney an “Important Leader”
from Zero Hedge
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) drew a line in the sand on Monday between the GOP establishment (the big club you ain’t in), and the populist QAnon movement – whose theories on elite pedophiles and a shadow government were deemed plausible by at least one-third of Americans in an October poll reported by Axios.
McConnell, who voted to go to war in Iraq based in part on a conspiracy theory and fabricated evidence misinformation from some guy, said on Monday – without actually saying her name – that freshman Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s embrace of “loony lies and conspiracy theories” is a “cancer for the Republican party.”
Crossing the Digital Rubicon
by Shawn A. Means
American Thinker
For an easy laugh at a party, pull out a Nokia candy-bar phone. “What is that…a phone?” “Does it actually work?” “Oh! Do you have to hit buttons three times and stuff?” “Can you get Facebook on it?” And so forth. Then, follow up with examples of the pitfalls of smartphone ‘privacy.’ Reliably observe nods of agreement and disturbed faces. Generally, people know how their lives are invasively monitored, their most intimate details packaged and sold as a commodity on markets they have little to no control over. Fatalistic shrugs of ‘what can you do’ and declarations of ‘I can’t live without my phone’ ensue.
Perhaps it is a fair trade. Detailed personal profiles are exchanged for handheld convenience along with dogged artificial intelligence analyzing what product or service will successfully secure our money — or even our loyalty. Brand loyalty is a highly-prized substance as franchise owners around the world attest. Other forms of allegiance are also highly-prized. Consider if your private personal details, even intimate psychological profiles, are instead exploited for coercion to an ideology.
A Series of Questions, Vis-a-Vis Covid-19
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Note — this is a guest post thus the “Other Voices” category; the author(s) have asked to remain unattributed. There have been no edits other than spacing and formatting necessary to post, and make sure the links to references display.
Many questions remain unanswered about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and we are certainly not the only scientists that have them. There are likely benign convincing explanations to everything, but to date we have not seen them.
Some will say: why does knowing the origin matter? It matters for several reasons. First of all, it will help us plan for the future. If this indeed was a virus that arose from close contact with wildlife and humans, this contact in the future will have to be managed. Secondly, if in the unlikely event this was perhaps escape from a lab, then lab procedures will have to be evaluated, and lab experiments with infectious possibly pandemic viruses will have to be additionally regulated. Finally, if this again was an unlikely escape from a lab, then knowing the exact type of virus we are dealing with would help us manage the current pandemic.
The story starts, we believe, with a noble goal: to prevent the world from ever having the type of pandemic we are currently experiencing, through production of a vaccine effective against all coronaviruses past and future.
Inflation Galore at Manufactures amid Massive Shifts in Demand, Supply-Chain Snags, Shortages, Lack of Shipping Capacity, and They’re Passing it On
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
For now, the story is that it’s just temporary.
For now, the story is that the sudden and massive shifts in the economy in 2020 have caused shortages and distortions in the goods-producing sectors and in shipping and trucking, as consumer spending has shifted from services – such as flying somewhere for vacation and spending oodles of money on lodging and restaurants and theme parks – to goods, particularly durable goods.
The story is that prices are rising because components and commodities are in short supply, and supply chains are dogged by production issues, and are facing transportation constraints, as demand for those goods has suddenly surged. And that all this is temporary.
#SilverSqueeze: Physical Silver Shortage vs. Paper Silver
by Torgny Persson
Bullion Star
The silver short squeeze in physical silver at present is unprecedented. Even so, the spot price of paper silver is not even close to the real physical equilibrium price of silver. BullionStar may soon have no option but to abandon setting prices based on silver spot price altogether and move to fixed prices.
Thanks to r/WallStreetBets (WSB) and related spin offs, the wider public is starting to open its eyes to the corruption and cronyism in the financial markets including in the paper gold and paper silver markets.
For years, BullionStar has been one of the strongest critics of the manipulated precious metals markets where paper issuance of silver (out of thin air) exceeds the physical availability of real silver at a multiple of at least 100 to 1.
H.R. 127: A New Bill in Congress Would Literally End Your Second Amendment Rights Permanently
by Michael Snyder
End of the American Dream
If a new bill that has been introduced in Congress eventually becomes law, the 2nd Amendment will still be in the U.S. Constitution, but for all practical purposes the rights that it is supposed to guarantee will be dead and gone. H.R. 127 was submitted on January 4th, and if you have not read it yet you can find the full text right here. It contains a lot of technical language, and so in this article I am going to try to break down what it means very simply. Now that the Democrats control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, there is going to be a major push to ram through some form of gun control legislation. If it is not this bill, it will be another one, so we need to be diligent.
One of the biggest things that H.R. 127 would do is that it would create a national firearms registration system that would literally be accessible by anyone…
The Great Reset, Part IV: “Stakeholder Capitalism” vs. “Neoliberalism”
by Michael Rectenwald
Mises.org
Any discussion of “stakeholder capitalism” must begin by noting a paradox: like “neoliberalism,” its nemesis, “stakeholder capitalism” does not exist as such. There is no such economic system as “stakeholder capitalism,” just as there is no such economic system as “neoliberalism.” The two antipathetic twins are imaginary ghosts forever pitted against each other in a seemingly endless and frenzied tussle.
Instead of stakeholder capitalism and neoliberalism, there are authors who write about stakeholder capitalism and neoliberalism and companies that more or less subscribe to the view that companies have obligations to stakeholders in addition to shareholders. But if Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have their way, there will be governments that induce, by regulations and the threat of burdensome taxation, companies to subscribe to stakeholder redistribution.
Can the Big Silver Shorts Be Squeezed?
by David Kranzler
Investment Research Dynamics
Unfortunately, unless the physical market can be squeezed, at some point the bullion banks like JP Morgan and HSBC – with help from the Central Banks and the BIS – will be able to regain their grip on the pricing of gold and silver using derivatives – paper gold and silver.
I hope this latest move in the silver price is sustainable but I don’t think it is. That said, hopefully it will elevate the awareness of the criminal manipulation of the metals by the big banks and shine a spotlight on the degree to which gold and silver, as well as the mining shares, are extraordinarily undervalued.
That said, the physical market can be squeezed, but it requires that big investors take delivery of gold and silver on the Comex and the LBMA and remove their bars from Comex/LBMA vaults for private safekeeping.
State Legislatures Eye Sound Money Reforms
by Jp Cortez
GoldSeek
More state lawmakers than ever are introducing sound money legislation in the opening days of the 2021 legislative session.
Several states will consider measures to remove sales or general excise taxes from the purchases of gold, silver, and other precious metals.
Many other states will weigh bills to eliminate income taxes on gold and silver.
Still others will decide whether state funds can be held in physical gold and silver — and may even consider establishing a state-chartered bullion depository.
With debt-funded spending and money-printing in our nation’s capital at breakneck speed, will states see the wisdom of enacting measures to counteract these policies of currency debasement?
Here’s a rundown on newly introduced state legislation:
Biden Taps Ex-Colleague of Hunter Biden’s Lawyer to Temporarily Run DOJ Criminal Division
by Ryan Saavedra
Daily Wire
President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, hired a new criminal defense attorney late last year to defend him in the federal government’s criminal investigation into his business dealings. Then, on the day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, Joe Biden tapped a close colleague of Hunter Biden’s new lawyer to oversee that Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, which is reportedly investigating Hunter Biden.
The news, first reported late last week by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, comes after Hunter Biden admitted late last year that he was under federal criminal investigation over his taxes, although subsequent reporting indicated that the investigation was also into foreign business dealings.
Justice Department Nominee Lisa Monaco Prosecuted Black Man Sentenced to 27 Years in Prison for Selling $20 Worth of Drugs
Lisa Monaco, who has been nominated to serve as deputy attorney general, helped prosecute a black man who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for selling $20 worth of drugs in a drug sting, court records show.
by Chuck Ross
DailyCaller.com
President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as deputy attorney general helped prosecute a black man who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for selling $20 worth of heroin to an undercover police officer. The government dropped charges against the man’s co-defendant as part of a plea deal, court records show.
Lisa Monaco, who Biden tapped for the Justice Department position, was one of the assistant U.S. attorneys who prosecuted a case in 2003 against Reginald C. Steward, a Washington, D.C. man who was charged following an undercover drug bust.
Steward was arrested in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 20, 2002 and was charged with unlawful distribution of heroin, according to court records.
He was convicted at a jury trial on April 16, 2003, and was sentenced to 27 years in prison. An appeals court in 2007 upheld Steward’s conviction, but noted that the evidence presented against him at trial wasn’t “overwhelming.”
Biden Adviser: $20 Billion for Schools in GOP Relief Proposal Not ‘Serious’ – ‘You Should Be Willing to Reopen’ Schools
by Ian Hanchett
Breitbart.com
On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Jared Bernstein stated that there is a “whole cohort of kids” whose lifetime earnings will be reduced if they miss a year of school and the $20 billion for schools offered by Republicans in their coronavirus relief proposal isn’t a “serious” offer.
Bernstein said, “The president’s bill, the American Rescue Act, has 170 billion in it to reopen the schools. Now, I’ve got to stop here for a second. Because I don’t think this is a Democrat versus Republican issue. I don’t think it’s a blue state or a red state issue. There are a whole cohort of kids whose lifetime earnings will be permanently reduced, probably somewhere between 5% and 10% if they miss a year of schooling. There are 2 million parents, mostly moms, out of the labor market because of their care responsibilities. So, I don’t care what side of the aisle I’m on, you should be willing to reopen the schools and 20 billion is not a serious offer when it comes to that.”
Business Should Fight Back Against Controls
by Donald J. Boudreaux
The American Institute for Economic Research
The April 1974 issue of Reason contains a newly relevant essay – “Fighting Back Against Controls” – by the late Henry Manne (who twelve years later became Dean of the law school at George Mason University). In this essay, which is derived from a speech given to a group of business executives, Manne bemoaned the political and public response to the nationwide fuel shortages that swept through the United States starting in late 1973. What makes this essay newly relevant is its applicability to the political and public response to today’s pandemic. The parallels are notable.
The Fuel Shortage
After quoting from a November 30th, 1973, Wall Street Journal piece by Phil Gramm – who argued that “Crises, as opposed to simple scarcity, result from market disruptions; and the only sector of society which possesses the power to disrupt a large market is the government” – Manne wrote:
The Great Silver Squeeze is On
by J. Johnson
JSMineset
Great and Wonderful First Day of February Folks,
Gold is trading in the green with the April contract now at $1,867.40, up $17.10 after the rally to $1,876 with the low down at $1,851.70. Short squeezed Silver is up $3.026 with the March contract at $29.94 after it reached $30.35 with the low down at $28.155. The internationally accepted US Dollar now has its index valued at 90.795, up 22.6 points after it reached 90.92 with the low at 90.49. Of course, all this happened already, before 5 am pst, the Comex open, London close, and after Veritas exposed the fact that Zuckerberg and his facebook team have been isolating “hate speech” for 4 years now, utilizing other governments ideas on what hate speech is. They are in the midst of killing our First Amendment, their next trick will be our right to defend ourselves. Wait! That’s happening too, if one lives in
Antifa-land; Portland and Seattle.