from Bill Whittle
Pennsylvania’s Lockdown Rules Were Arbitrary, Inconsistent, and Political
by Georg Grassmueck
Mises.org
On October 6, 2020, the auditor general of Pennsylvania, Eugene DePasquale, released a status update on his ongoing audit of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) waiver process for businesses that appealed Governor Wolf’s covid-19 closure order. To everyone’s surprise, the auditor general concluded that his office discovered inconsistencies and puzzling decisions in the business waiver process.
On March 19, Governor Tom Wolf ordered businesses not categorized as “life-sustaining” to close in order to slow the spread of covid-19, however, businesses could request a waiver to remain open. Immediately afterward, numerous business owners and legislators complained that the waiver process lacked transparency. On April 30, the auditor general’s office announced DePasquale would audit how DCED manages the waiver process. On September 14, 2020, US district judge William Stickman IV found Governor Wolf’s business closure order unconstitutional, stating that covid-19 orders from Governor Wolf and Pennsylvania secretary of health Rachel Levine violated, and continue to violate, the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly as well as the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. William Stickman IV writes that despite having good intentions in addressing the spread of the virus, “even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered.”
Biden’s DOJ Nominee Repeatedly Posted Misinformation About Breonna Taylor’s Death On Social Media
by Jeffrey Cawood
Daily Wire
President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has repeatedly posted misinformation online about the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman fatally shot by police in her Kentucky home last March.
Kristen Clarke is among several blue-check marks on Twitter that amplified the false claim that Ms. Taylor was lying in her bed when she was slain by police during the deadly raid. On at least one occasion, Clarke helped distort the narrative even further, erroneously stating that Taylor had been asleep in her bed when she was killed.
Janet Yellen Received $810k in Speaking Fees from Hedge Fund Embroiled in GameStop Saga
by Chuck Ross
DailyCaller.com
Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen received more than $800,000 in speaking fees from a hedge fund that has become embroiled in the saga over stock trades for video game retailer GameStop, according to her financial disclosures.
Citadel, a hedge fund founded by Ken Griffin, a major GOP donor, paid Yellen $810,000 to speak at several events from October 2019 to October 2020, according to Yellen’s filings with the Office of Government Ethics.
The Chicago-based hedge fund paid Yellen $292,500 for a speech on Oct. 17, 2019, $180,000 for one on Dec. 3, 2019, and $337,500 to speak at a series of webinars held from Oct. 9-27, 2020.
The Money of Kingdoms and Empires
by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
While gold gets most of the headlines (for good reason), silver is often ignored. Silver is sometimes referred to as “poor man’s gold.” But it shouldn’t be ignored. Silver has a long history as a monetary metal. It also has many industrial applications that make it valuable.
Today, we’re going to take an in-depth look at this important metal.
The Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire minted a popular silver coin called the denarius. One denarius was the daily wage for unskilled labor and Roman soldiers.
Of course, in the late Empire, it was debased by mixing the silver with base metals. The decline of the Roman Empire went hand in hand with the decline of sound money.
Silver was also an important monetary metal in China, adopted to end hyperinflation caused by overissuance of paper money.
Democrat Lawmakers Introduce Bill for Nationwide Mail-In Voting: Necessary to ‘Make Real Progress’
by Hannah Bleau
Breitbart.com
Two Democrat lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday, dubbed the “Vote at Home Act,” to expand “Oregon-style” mail-in voting nationwide, contending that the move is necessary to “make real progress” in the country.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), is designed to “fight voter suppression” as detailed by Wyden’s press release. The measure would “massively expand vote-at-home ballot access, provide voters with pre-paid ballot envelopes and enact automatic voter registration.”
The lawmakers point to the unprecedented number of Americans who voted by mail in the 2020 presidential election — a move Democrats vehemently pushed. While progressives largely used the coronavirus pandemic as justification for opening the doors for mass mail-in voting, which many critics warn leads to mass fraud, universal vote-by-mail has existed as a primary goal for the Democrat Party, even prior to the pandemic. The measure introduced on Thursday essentially updates the vote-by-mail measure the two lawmakers introduced in 2017, long before the Wuhan virus struck.
The Constitutional Argument Against Trump’s Senate Trial is Convenient. Is it Also Wrong?
While many prominent constitutional scholars think trying a former president is perfectly legal, the dissenters make some points that are worth considering.
by Jacob Sullum
Reason.com
Forty-five Republican senators voted this week against trying Donald Trump on the charge that he incited the Capitol riot, maintaining that it is unconstitutional to consider the article of impeachment against him now that he is no longer president. That argument is very convenient for Republicans who do not want to alienate Trump’s supporters but also do not want to defend the conduct that led to his impeachment. But the fact that the argument is convenient does not necessarily mean it is wrong. While many prominent legal scholars think Trump’s trial is perfectly constitutional, the dissenters make some interesting points that are bound to come up again during the trial.
As Reason’s Damon Root has noted, there is historical precedent for impeaching or trying federal officials after they leave office. William Blount was tried in 1799 after he had been impeached and expelled from the Senate, and former Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876, after he resigned. The House conducted an impeachment investigation of Vice President John C. Calhoun in 1827 based on his conduct as secretary of war, a position he no longer held. As a congressman in 1846, former President John Quincy Adams said he was “amenable to impeachment by this House for everything I did during the time I held any public office.”
Welcome Back to the Real World
by David Brady
Sprott Money
A quick word on today’s action in precious metals, specifically Silver. The idea that a bunch of retail traders could squeeze shorts in Silver on the COMEX futures market like those in a microcap stock such as GameStop is ludicrous, imho. The Silver market may be small, but the volumes traded are far bigger than the market cap on GameStop. Second, the shorts in GameStop were hedge funds. The shorts in Silver are the Bullion Banks. They can create futures contracts at will—and in almost unlimited amounts—and sell them into the futures markets to drive down prices. A bunch of retail traders have little or no chance against such volumes. The end of the COMEX is far more likely to be driven by demand for the physical metals than any raid on shorts, imho.
Trump Supporter Faces Ten Years in Prison for Posting Memes
by Damjan Tutarkov
LaCorte News
A social media “influencer” faces up to ten years in prison. Prosecutors say he used social media to deprive people of their right to vote. Defenders say he posted the memes as a joke and did not deprive anyone of anything.
A release from the DOJ states that Douglas Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was arrested Wednesday in Florida and has been charged ”with conspiring with others in advance of the 2016 United States Presidential Election to use various social media platforms to disseminate misinformation designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”
A criminal complaint filed against Mackey accuses him of conspiring with others “to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates (the “Candidate”) to “vote” via text message or social media and thus to fail to cast their ballots in a legally valid manner.”
For instance, on November 1, 2016, Mackey posted a meme of an African American woman standing before a “African Americans for” followed by the name of the presidential candidate, and a text that read, “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home.”
Facebook Ramps Up Censorship by “Dispelling Political Content”
by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
Mark Zuckerberg took to his own platform (Facebook) on Wednesday to tell users of the social media site’s new “community update.” In a 2,800-word post, which amounts to a promise of censorship, Zuckerberg wrote that it will begin efforts to hide political posts for users’ news feeds.
Zuckerberg said Facebook will begin an effort to hide political posts from users’ news feeds, noting the site is aiming to promote “healthy and positive” interactions. “We’re currently considering steps we could take to reduce the amount of political content in News Feed,” Zuckerberg wrote, adding: “One of the top pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience.”
The real question is if Zuckerberg will block and shadow ban Joe Biden in the same way he blocked Donald Trump. We’ll see, but this amounts to censorship any way you slice it. If people don’t want political posts in their news feed, it should be up to them to unfollow or simply not click on those posts. But personal responsibility is a thing of the past.
Viral Reddit Post from ‘Robinhood Insider’ Claims White House Pressured Broker to Block Buying of GameStop Shares
WallStreetBets community warns post may be a ploy to panic people into selling.
by Paul Joseph Watson
Info Wars
A post claiming to be from a Robinhood employee that has gone viral on Reddit alleges that the White House put pressure on the broker to halt buying of GameStop shares.
Retail traders were left fuming earlier today when Robinhood and other trading platforms curbed buying of stocks that the Reddit community WallStreetBets has targeted in its bid to bankrupt hedge funds.
Many saw this as a blatantly corrupt, and potentially criminal, move to rig the rules in order to protect the interests of multi-billionaire Wall Street financial interests that stand to lose vast sums of money if the stocks don’t plummet in value.
Now a person claiming to be a Robinhood employee claimed on Reddit that the Biden administration contacted the broker to pressure it to close trading on GME. The post has since gone viral, receiving over 23,000 upvotes.
The full post is reprinted below;
Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Silver Shines as the Too Often Naked Shorts Run for the Exits
“Democracy is held captive, not just by money, but by ideas — the ideas that money buys.” – William Greider
[…] Silver exploded higher today.
The capping on gold continued.
It too will fail as all long term price manipulation schemes do..
Stocks look wobbly.
I took quite a bit of profit and risks off the table today.
Have a pleasant evening.
Reddit Traders Target Silver: Man Who Oversees Nearly $160 Billion Says Silver May Be Poised to Skyrocket
from King World News
As the Reddit army of traders target the silver market, today the man who oversees nearly $160 billion says the price of silver may be poised to skyrocket.
Silver And The Reddit Army Of Traders
January 28 (King World News) – Eric King: “Rob, one of your holdings is silver and as you know the silver market lit up today. You are aware of the piece King World News published where Chris Ritchie, who runs one of the top silver companies in the world (SilverCrest Metals), was asking me off the cuff, with the Reddit army of traders entering the silver market and looking at GameStop’s trading volume, what will it take to purchase 20% or 30% of annual silver mine supply when you look at what the total dollar trading volume was in GameStop?
How Much Longer Before the Wolf Eats the Sheep and the Game Stops? with Lobo Tiggre
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Lobo Tiggre of the IndependentSpeculator.com joined us for a look at the end game. We could be there now, but how many people really understand it? There’s a Record number of call options out. Everybody is long, at some point reality matters, but when?Gold just got smacked down by a rate spike. But is inflation bad for gold? If inflation drives up rates, how much inflation will there be? Does the Fed really have rates locked down till 2023. There are all sorts of cracks in the system and the black swans are circling over head. As Lobo says, Doug Casey, myself and Lobo believed that the system was ending in 2010-11 and he we are a decade later asking the same questions and seeking different answers. Can they keep the illusion working indefinitely? Remember Lobo means wolf in Spanish. In the end the wolf eats the sheep.
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Airlines Suck and You, America, Deserve This
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
See what you get for letting Biden get away with his #MaskHole bull**** on federal land and in federal buildings — which he, Fauci and his Press Secretary violated within hours, and his excuse was that he was “celebrating”? Oh, and demanding a Covid-19 test before boarding an international air flight to the US?
Guess what — now he’s talking about forcing a Covid-19 test on anyone taking a domestic air flight.
May I remind you that ten million US jobs are driven by domestic passenger air travel?
Many domestic tickets have prices that are less than the cost of a Covid test; this means such a requirement would double or more the ticket price. Further, if you test positive on the other end away from home you’re now stranded at your own expense. There has never been a documented situation where airlines have been a material spread vector even without mask mandates, which are now in place. Indeed the airflow (top to bottom, filtration and air source — bleed air from outside that is typically around -40F to start with, then is compressed in the engine and gets damn hot, killing anything that might have been in it) keeps “things” away from you that others may expel and gets them out of the environment rapidly.
The Coming New Order
by Jeff Thomas
International Man
For many years, a handful of people have postulated that those who control industry, finance and governments are essentially the same people – a cabal of sorts that have, over generations, solidified their relationships in order to gain greater wealth and power, whilst systematically making things ever more difficult for the free market to exist.
But why should this be? Surely, corporate leaders are more ardently capitalist than anyone else?
Well, on the surface, that might appear to make sense, but once a significant position of power has been achieved, those who have achieved it recognize that, since they’ve already reached the top, the primary concern changes. From then on, the primary concern becomes the assurance that no others are able to climb so high as they have.