Saturday, April 30, 2022

BIDEN ECONOMY: The DOW and S&P 500 Record Worst April Since 1970

By Joe Hoft | Gateway Pundit 

 

The Biden economy just keeps getting worse.  It’s so bad that the performance appears to be intentional. This latest market results are horrific. And the economic numbers are only getting worse. 


We saw what Biden did with Afghanistan.  He gave the Taliban that country along with $84 billion in military equipment and arms.  Now Biden is destroying the economy like he did with foreign affairs. 


The markets are imploding because of Biden’s policies of spending the US into oblivion and making the country dependent on other countries for oil and gas again like under the Obama years.  Biden’s policies are showing in the markets. 


Market Watch reports: 


Stocks slumped anew in volatile April trade, marked by large daily and intraday swings. The Dow Jones Industrial


Average DJIA, -2.77% plunged 4.9% in April, while the S&P 500 shed 8.8% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -4.17% tumbled 13.3%. It was the biggest monthly percentage declines since March 2020 for the Dow and S&P, and the largest for the Nasdaq since October 2008. 

It was the worst April performance for the Dow and S&P 500 since 1970, and the biggest April drop for the Nasdaq since 2000.

 

Stocks fell as investors digested mixed results from formerly highflying tech companies. They also adjusted expectations around the Federal Reserve and the prospect of a series of outsize rate increases and an aggressive wind-down of the central bank’s balance sheet as it attempts to rein in inflation running at its hottest in more than 40 years. 


In addition, the markets fell again into correction territory. 


An ugly end to a cruel April on Friday saw the S&P 500 post its second correction — a drop of 10% from a recent peak — so far this year. 


The large-cap benchmark SPX, -3.63% ended a topsy-turvy week with a 3.6% fall on Friday, closing at 4,131.93, its lowest finish since May 19, 2021. That leaves it down 10.8% from its close at 4,631.60 set on March 29, which was the day it left a correction it had entered in late February. 


Biden is attempting to be the most disliked politician in US and world history.  He doesn’t seem to care because he doesn’t seem to know it. 


He doesn’t seem to know much for that matter as he appears to be failing more daily to old age senility. 


WH pick for Big Brother-like disinformation board spread lie about Hunter Biden laptop

By Emily Crane | New York Post


Nina Jankowicz has previously cast doubt on The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop reporting.

Guess it takes one to know one?

President Biden’s pick to lead his Department of Homeland Security’s Big Brother-like Disinformation Governance Board has her own history of posting disinformation online.

Nina Jankowicz, who was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, has repeatedly cast doubt on The Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

During a series of live tweets during the presidential debate between Biden and Donald Trump in October 2020, Jankowicz had referenced the laptop.

“Back on the ‘laptop from hell,’ apparently—Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op,” Jankowicz tweeted.

“Trump says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,'” she added.

Her tweet resurfaced immediately after she revealed she’d been named executive director of the new disinformation bureau on Wednesday — as conservatives slammed her as a “leftist radical” and expressed doubt in her ability to spot misinformation.

Jankowicz tried to brush off the controversy surrounding her old laptop tweet, saying: “For those who believe this tweet is a key to all my views, it is simply a direct quote from both candidates during the final presidential debate. If you look at my timeline, you will see I was livetweeting that evening.”

But the Russian misinformation expert had told the Associated Press just a week earlier that there was doubt the laptop even belonged to Hunter and there were multiple red flags that emails uncovered from the device were legit.

“We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” Jankowicz said at the time.

Jankowicz had also tweeted a link to a news article in October 2020 that she said cast “yet more doubt on the provenance of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story.”

“Not to mention that the emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop,” she added in another tweet.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson slammed Jankowicz on Wednesday as a “beacon of misinformation” over her dismissal of the laptop – and accused her of “furthering the false media narrative” with her series of tweets.

Jankowicz, who has researched Russian disinformation tactics and online harassment, also previously praised Christopher Steele — the author of the since-discredited Trump-bashing dossier.

In August 2020, Jankowicz tweeted about the former British spy’s appearance on the Infotagion podcast, writing: “Listened to this last night – Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen.”

Steele’s fake dossier, which sparked the probe into whether former President Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with Russians during the 2016 election, was eventually debunked by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

More recently, Jankowicz flagged concerns about the potential for Elon Musk to takeover Twitter.

“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities,” she said in an interview with NPR ahead of Musk’s takeover deal emerging.

Since then, the billionaire Tesla CEO has vowed to make it a free speech haven.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley seized on Jankowicz’s tweet about free speech, tweeting: “The Biden Administration’s new anti-speech czar is apparently no fan of the ⁦@elonmusk⁩ Twitter acquisition. This is the person Joe Biden just put in charge of policing Americans’ speech. Using the power of the government.”

Jankowicz and the DHS didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki had no comment when asked about Jankowicz’s ability to head the disinformation board during Thursday’s media briefing.

“I don’t have any comment on the laptop … And I don’t know who this individual is, so I have no comment on that specifically,” Psaki told reporters.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/28/wh-pick-for-disinformation-board-spread-hunter-biden-laptop-lie/

Friday, April 29, 2022

“2000 Mules” Is Taking on a Life of Its Own, And It Hasn’t Even Been Released Yet

By Joe Hoft | Gateway Pundit


The 2020 Election was stolen.  Something was not right.  There are so many unanswered questions.  With all the unknowns, Dinesh D’Souza is set to release “2000 Mules” and it is the right time.  

Americans and the world knew something was not right.  D’Souza has a piece of the answer.  Recently a second trailer of the movie was released.

Here is where you can see the movie.

People in Texas are excited about the movie 2000 Mules.


The Amen for America group is planning on being on the Northern Virginia overpass from Friday through Monday (starting tomorrow).

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/2000-mules-taking-life-hasnt-released-yet/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=2022-04-29

The US economy shrank in the first quarter

By Anneken Tappe | CNN Business


America's economy unexpectedly shrank in the first quarter of 2022, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Thursday.

The nation's gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of economic activity -- declined at an annualized rate of 1.4% between January and March in an abrupt reversal of the prior year's strong growth.

While one quarter does not yet make a trend, it is a warning sign for how the recovery is going: Two straight quarters of declining growth meet a commonly used definition of a recession.

It was a marked slowdown from the 6.9% growth pace recorded in the final quarter of last year, and the worst performance since the pandemic recession in the second quarter of 2020. Economists had predicted an annualized growth rate of 1.1%, according to Refinitiv.

Much of the decline was due to a decrease in inventory investment, which had been booming in the final months of 2021.

Exports and government spending also fell, while imports rose. Consumer spending, which is vital to the economy, increased as prices kept rising.

The price index tracking personal consumption expenditure rose 7% in the first three months of the year, or 5.2% when stripping out energy and food prices.

A second estimate of first quarter GDP growth will be published at the end of May.

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RELATED ARTICLE

How Bad Will the Biden Recession Be?

BY ATHENA THORNE | P J MEDIA

(AP Photo/David Karp, File)

With inflation the worst it’s been in 40 years, can a significant recession be far behind?

Deutsche Bank certainly thinks a major recession is in the offing. At the beginning of April, the multinational investment and financial services bank originally forecast a mild U.S. inflation. But on Tuesday, its team of economists wrote in a report to clients, which was titled “Why the coming recession will be worse than expected,” “We will get a major recession.”

At issue is the rampant (and completely predictable) inflation caused by Big Left’s disastrous COVID-19 response. Shut down businesses and industries? You disrupt the supply chain and create shortages. Flood idle people with trillions of freshly-printed new cash while pausing their rent and loan obligations? Now you have a massively increased number of dollars chasing a greatly reduced amount of goods. Add in higher fuel costs from Biden’s God-awful energy policies, and prices on everything are sky-high.

When the problem is severe enough, the Federal Reserve steps in and raises interest rates to make money more expensive. This tactic unfortunately has the nasty side effect of slowing the economy, as businesses and consumers rein in spending, production drops, and jobs are lost. (This is why everyone warned Biden and his Leftist Congress not to dump trillions of dollars into the economy in the first place — there’s no good way to fix the problems that behavior creates.)

The Fed maintains that it can thread the needle and raise interest rates just enough to clear away that pesky inflation, but not so much as to crush the economic recovery from the catastrophic COVID-19 shutdown policy. But The Street reports:

Deutsche Bank economists don’t think it will play out that way. Led by Chief Economist David Folkerts-Landau, they see the Fed having to raise the federal funds rate to 5%-6% to get inflation under control. The fed funds rate is now 0.25%-0.5%.

Rate increases, Fed balance sheet reduction and the “financial upheaval that accompanies [them] will push the economy into a significant recession by late next year,” the economists wrote in a commentary.

“Something stronger than a mild recession will be needed to do the job” of controlling inflation. They see unemployment ultimately rising by several percentage points. It totaled 3.6% in March.

The basic problem: “the scourge of inflation has returned and is here to stay,” the economists said. “While we may have seen the highs now, it will be a long time before [inflation] recedes back to acceptable levels near the Fed’s 2% target.”

New York-based Goldman Sachs is more optimistic, predicting that inflation will be tackled without tipping the nation into a recession. In a Friday report, the investment bank’s economists wrote, “We do not need a recession but probably do need growth to slow to a somewhat below-potential pace, a path that raises recession risk.”

Likewise, economists from UBS, which is headquartered in Switzerland, wrote on Monday that “Inflation should ease from current levels, and we do not expect a recession from rising interest rates.”

It would be awesome if we could get rid of Bidenflation while still avoiding a recession. But there are other indicators that a downturn is on the way.

For one thing, the demand for trucking services took a nosedive last month. Fox Business covered the story:

A sharp, unexpected downturn in trucking demand since the beginning of March could be evidence of a looming economic recession, according to Bank of America strategists.

A Tuesday analyst note from Ken Hoexter, the managing director of Bank of America’s trucking research, shows that shippers see rapidly softening demand for trucks, with a gauge tracking truckload demand falling for the fourth consecutive month to its lowest level since June 2020.

That is “near freight recession level,” Hoexter wrote. On an annual basis, the gauge has plummeted about 23%.

Fox notes that “Trucking has proven to be a somewhat reliable indicator for the U.S. economy and is often viewed as a bellwether, because when people buy less, companies ship less and business activity then slows,” and that “Broader economic downturns have followed six of the 12 trucking recessions since 1972, according to one analysis conducted in 2019 by Convoy, a trucking data company.”

In another alarming development, a dreaded yield curve inversion occurred at the beginning of April. Morgan Stanley reported:

Recently, yields for 2-year Treasuries moved higher than those of 10-year Treasuries, or what economists call a “2s10s” curve inversion. Morgan Stanley strategists think the 2s10s curve will invert further and sustain that inversion throughout the remainder of the year.

Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, and other investors quickly downplayed the importance of the inversion. Gargi Chaudhuri, BlackRock head of iShares Investment Strategy, Americas, wrote, “We do not see a recession occurring in the near-term.” She claimed, “While we are hesitant to say that this time is different, we note that many factors now differ from previous yield curve inversions.” Let’s hope.

There are also psychological issues at play. There’s a hot war in Europe that threatens to spread. Politicians now regularly make capricious decisions with years-long ramifications that make investment and development near-impossible, such as shutting down energy projects already in progress, locking down economies whenever someone sneezes, and constantly changing the rules about who can cross borders. No one is feeling particularly confident about long-term planning just now, which will depress economic activity.

Anyone who has been around a generation or two has seen all of this happen before. Biden and the Democrats’ inflation followed by recession was as predictable as the sunrise. And thus, it’s easy to predict what they will do next: blame the inevitable downturn they caused on the new Republican Congress we’ll be swearing in after the midterms.

Bet on it.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/04/27/how-bad-will-the-biden-recession-be-n1593012?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=97dcba5b3836df02659d13cdaaceb7725e0831d49eea234e5b9b5647e5a46308&recip=28551147

 

 

 

Thursday, April 28, 2022

If All Government Is Local, So Are Elections

By William Haupt III [Tennessee Watchdog Journalist, Columnist, Author, and Citizen Legislator via The Center Square]

Image Credit: Pixabay

“In local government, you are only a few blocks away from those that you serve.” – Valerie Jarrett

When you have a street light that goes belly up, a stop sign that’s hidden behind an untamed tree, or an intersection you cross daily with a prayer in heart, who do you turn to for help? Rather than shift through volumes of unfriendly municipal websites, you contact your local county or city official.

When local elections are held with no state or federal races, they are a mere afterthought. Voters either don’t know there is an election or don’t care. Even when they are held during the general election in November, far too often it is only special interests that know the issues and know the candidates.

Turnout for presidential elections is considered low when it dips below 60%; and in midterms when it is less than 40%. Yet local elections that draw a shameful 10% or 20% turnout are common across our nation. Turnout for local elections has always been historically low; but recent data show that it is getting even worse.

“Elections are determined by people who don’t show up.” – Larry Sabato

If it is so important who serves on your county commission or on city council, why is there such a low voter turnout for these offices? The number one reason why turnout is low for local elections is simply: most voters don’t even know there is an election, who is running or where or when to vote?

The 1965 Voting Rights Act states it is disenfranchisement not to inform voters of an election. Yet counties and cities either don’t know this or care. A Portland State University study finds the few who always vote are older and more affluent, while all others make up a fraction of the electorate.

The Portland study found less than a third of voters cast ballots during a local election. This is easy to comprehend when voters aren’t notified of an election. If the election is not held during a general election, less than 50% of the electorate is even aware there is a local election and who is running.

Our system doesn’t make it particularly easy to vote. It’s a familiar story. Most municipal elections are held during odd-numbered years far away from November. Only five states, Arkansas, Oregon, Kentucky, Nebraska and Rhode Island, hold local elections in November or with general elections.

If local elections are held during a primary or general election it is the candidates who are notifying voters about the election – begging people to vote for them, not the county or the city governments.

“The only people bound by campaign promises are those who believe them.” – Christopher Hitchens

Local governments started holding elections separately from state and federal elections during the 20th century Progressive Era. They hoped this would keep state and local elections from being overshadowed by national partisan races. That’s still an argument used today. But if we look closer, the devil is in the details. As the late, great Paul Harvey use to say, “Now for the rest of the story.”

In her book, “Timing and Turnout,” Berkeley political scientist Sarah Anzia notes that not much has changed in local elections. “A small subset of voters who tend to be wealthier and older are those who vote during stand-alone municipal elections.” This enables special interest groups to “capture” local elections.

“If something is broken but works for the right people they won’t fix it?” – Gary Martin

Rice University’s Melissa Marschall, head of the Local Elections Project, noted local governments are in no hurry to reform local elections. “When the political machines ran municipalities, isolated elections decreased the influence of immigrants breaking the political machines. When fewer non-English speakers turned out, this effectively allowed governments to shelter the political machines.”

Marschall noted it is no accident that many “local school district elections” are held in standalone years. Since these elections draw so few voters to the polls, it is far easier to elect union-friendly candidates. She notes by isolating school district elections, they can limit turnout to supporters. The average teacher salary is 3% higher in these districts than in those that hold concurrent elections.

Marschall believes that, “Holding local elections on separate dates has outlived its usefulness.” And although there is a growing interest for states and municipalities to move local elections to coincide with general elections, there is a lot of local resistance. This is especially true for special interests.

Last month the California Assembly approved a bill to force localities with low turnout of less than 25% to move local elections to overlap with state or federal contests. What sounds like a good idea is not welcomed by everyone. There is steep resistance from school boards and local politicians.

California State Rep. David Hadley is arguing against holding concurrent elections. He claims that this will hurt those vying for local support since it, “Forces them to compete with state and federal races for money, volunteers, and for voter attention. I believe this will hurt us more than help us.”

During the 18th and 19th centuries, “political machines” ran large U.S. cities. They helped organize and build big cities, but they also controlled them. Special interests, business, and elected officials were all intricate parts in the machines. The key to their success was controlling the local elections.

“The appearance of the law must be upheld – especially when it’s being broken.” – Boss Tweed

Although the “political machines” of the past are gone, they’ve been replaced with political parties. The politics of local elections continues to favor incumbents and they control local elections. Many of these offices are billed as “nonpartisan.” Party politics or not, it will always be politics as usual.

Robert Ingersoll told us, “Ignorance is not bliss, it is punishment.” We hear about what is going on in Congress each day and what our state reps are doing also. But if we want to find out what is going on in our county government, we have to go to their website and dig for information. And we are lucky if we get a tidbit of local government news in the throw-away fishwrap. That’s just not good enough.

Today’s local government political machines are a mixed bag, depending on demographics. In rural areas, you have “the good ol boys.” In the large cities, you have “the establishment.” But they are a tight knit group of locals who go along to get along to maintain power. They do as much as we allow them to do. Hiding election information is one thing that they are extremely proficient at.

Since all government is local, local elections are the most important place to cast your vote. If you have a city or a county that is not notifying you of every single election and referendum, they are violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They need to be reminded that “federal law trumps state law and protects voter disenfranchisement.” You’d be surprised how few local governments have ever been told this.

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” – Abraham Lincoln

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About the Author: William Haupt III is a retired professional journalist, author, and citizen legislator in California for over 40 years. He got his start working to approve California Proposition 13. His work also appears in The Center SquareThe Western JournalNeighbor NewspapersKPXJ 21 (Shreveport, LA)Killeen Daily HeraldAberdeen American NewsInsideNovaKankakee Daily JournalMonterey County WeeklyOlean Times HeraldThe Greeneville Sun and more. Follow William on Twitter @iii_haupt.

https://tennesseeconservativenews.com/if-all-government-is-local-so-are-elections/

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Here Are 10 Ways Elon Musk Vows to Change Twitter

BY VICTORIA TAFT |PJ MEDIA

(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Now that Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter has been approved by the social media company’s board of directors, what does the tech whiz plan to do with it?

Musk says he hopes his haters will remain on the platform “because that is what free speech means.”

You already know that Musk demands more free speech on the social media platform, after woke Twitter executives sent their flying monkeys to censor scores of conservatives, including President Donald Trump, and killed stories that made Leftists look bad, such as Hunter Biden’s laptop. But there are other key things Musk wants to change.

Besides reducing censorship on Twitter, here are 10 other ways Musk will change the social media platform.

1. Open the Vault

Musk wants to reveal the Twitter algorithm. He told a Ted Talk interviewer last week that he wants to make it open source like Linux and put it on GitHub to invite improvements, like C Plus Plus, Java, and other big programs.

2. Editing Function

Musk wants an editing function on Twitter. That would be nice; it’s a bummer to find out that your tweet with several retweets was struck by the autocorrect demons after you typed in the right word.

3. Mysterious Promoted Tweets

Musk wants to reveal why some tweets are promoted and others are not.

4. Less Advertising

He believes that there should be less advertising on Twitter. As a possible way to make up for the loss of revenue, Musk could allow “Twitter Blue” customers who pay for more features to receive a coveted checkmark (not the usual blue checkmark) that denotes them as a paying customer.

5. Working for Free

Have the board of directors work for free.

6. Stop the Bots

Get rid of bots and scammers on Twitter

7. Shadow Banning

Stop shadow banning. I know all about this.

8. End the Endless Threads

Allow for longer tweets.

9. Private

Take the social media company private to keep politics out of it.

10. Cut Staff

The Wall Street Journal reports Musk might reduce the number of ones and zeros working at the Silicon Valley firm.

Anything Musk does with Twitter will be an improvement. He’s not a savior, but he is appreciated. Go, Elon, go.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/04/25/here-are-10-ways-elon-musk-vows-to-change-twitter-n1592622?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=97dcba5b3836df02659d13cdaaceb7725e0831d49eea234e5b9b5647e5a46308&recip=28551147