It’s a disturbing trend that has been spreading over the past few years:  Gay and Trans couples buying off surrogate mothers to have babies for them, then taking those babies and using them as fashion accessories for social media clout.  The trend includes bizarre newborn baby photo ops in which the couples (usually gay or trans men) pose in a hospital bed with the baby as if they just gave birth to it. 

While legal in many countries, the practice has some unsettling implications in terms of cultural respect for motherhood, the future life stability of children being used as props, and the normalization of gender identity mental illness.

Transgender man lies in a hospital bed as his newborn baby is handed to him after he paid a surrogate to have a baby for him.

Do you agree or disagree with surrogacy?

pic.twitter.com/B3c8L2noOM

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 8, 2024

Transgender man feeds newborn surrogate baby with milk bottle during a TikTok live stream.

The man used the baby to promote his hair products:

“You can go order some shampoo and conditioner and that’s the best gift of all.”

🎥 @SarahisCensored

pic.twitter.com/McDZiUKqu3

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 10, 2024

The Italian government under Georgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, has closed the overseas loophole in the LGBT baby market.  It is one of the first governments to finally address and block the practice of IVF for surrogacy (in place since 2004), and they have now extended that ban to include the recruitment of surrogate mothers outside of the country.  In other words, it’s a complete ban on surrogate pregnancies.  Those who break the law face fines of up to $1 million and 2 years in prison.

Critics are calling the law a “monstrous attack” on the LGBT community and their ability to have a family.  Keep in mind, the law applies to all Italians, not just those that identify as gay or trans.  However, it is likely that the restrictions were specifically designed to stop the explosion of the LGBT baby trade and trans surrogacy.  Meloni has has described herself as a Christian mother and believes children should only be raised by a man and a woman.

Because the practice of surrogacy for gay male couples in particular has been limited until recently, there is scant data on the effects of the practice on children as they grow up.  There are multiple scientific studies that do show that children in gay households fare worse as they grow up than those in homes with a traditional mother and father. 

These problems include whether a child had grown up to need public assistance like welfare, were more likely to have anxiety or depression, were more likely to be abused, or were more apt engage in unhealthy habits such as having more sexual partners, smoking or using drugs.

Whenever such unbiased and non-political studies are released, they are immediately attacked by gay activist groups for “bigotry”.  Today, it is unlikely that these kinds of studies will ever be funded, let alone released to the public.  The science on the social effects of the gay and trans lifestyle is fully suppressed in the 2020s. 

Common arguments against the surrogacy ban include claims that surrogacy is necessary in order to counter Italy’s population decline.  But leftist organizations exploit the western population drop as a rationale for many of their agendas, including their mass immigration agenda. It’s not enough for a society to simply have more babies, they need stable homes for those babies where the children are not merely there to satisfy the narcissism of LGBT activists.  

Italy, it seems, has decided to err on the side of caution.

Authored by Jeremiah Hosea via Substack,

A dignified life, or dehumanized technocracy — which would you prefer for your children?

As you may have noticed, I do enjoy lists. I suppose they appeal to my sense of order. The following is a list of fundamental principles that were strangely, as if by hypnosis, abdicated during the Convid Scamdemic.

I hope you enjoy, as do I, the novelty (at least for this Substack) of presenting this particular list in countdown format!

8. Do Not Trust the Government — how anyone could not understand this principle by now is beyond me. You don’t need to refer to ancient history to reach this conclusion. You don’t even need to have read Machiavelli (although I highly recommend you do). Just look at recent history and you will be provided with numerous examples indicating that no private citizen should ever trust the government.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was even invoked by some of the poison pushers during Covid in patronizing efforts to assuage vaccine hesitancy. It was mentioned dismissively as though it were something that happened a million years ago and would never happen again. Yet every thinking person should take stock of this nightmarish event. It was medical torture that transpired over the course of 40 years and was presided over by the CDC. Yes — the same CDC.

Politically, since the turn of the new millennium, we have been treated to a continuous barrage of psyops and wars, wars and psyops. The dubious nature of the 2000 election, the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11, the lies about WMDs that resulted in catastrophic war in Iraq, the total bailout of the banks in 2008 with not as much as a life-raft for the people, the Flint Michigan water crisis, the annihilation of Libya — we could go on and on and on in reciting examples of negligence, malfeasance and heinous actions carried out by our government irrespective of which political party held the presidency at the time. (I insist they are one party pretending to be two.)

How could one claim to have observed history and then fail to notice that virtually every major government project done in opposition to an enemy whether literal or abstract, from all the senseless catastrophic wars against regimes to the fruitless and counterproductive “War on Drugs” and then “War on Terror”, have been entirely negative in both nature and results?

Whenever the government announces (or doesn’t announce) it is embarking on some grand new endeavor, usually something catastrophic is underway.

During Covid, I didn’t just see people fail to be suspicious of a government that had thoroughly earned our distrust, I had the even more harrowing experience of witnessing people I had known previously to be “critical thinkers” suddenly devolve into people incapable of any critical thought whatsoever.

7. Don’t Trust Major Corporations, Especially Big Pharma aka Big Harma — what is a corporation? It is an instrument designed to maximize profit in the marketplace. In capitalism ruthlessness, relentlessness and an amoral approach are all considered admirable traits.

The willingness of a corporation to poison, pollute, injure or even kill is requisite to compete in the upper echelons of the market place. Major corporations do not have a track record of admitting fault or confessing guilt. They do not have the tendency of “taking things down a notch” for the sake of the environment, or human dignity or being reasonable. The ends absolutely justify the means and therefore, nothing is off-limits in the pursuit of maximizing profits. If there is collateral damage, or if a few fines need to be paid along the way — so be it. That will all be neatly filed and tucked away under the label of “the cost of doing business.” This description shouldn’t shock anyone — I am merely describing the spirit of capitalism and the spirit of corporatism.

Big industry from the military industrial complex to Big-Agra is thoroughly out of hand, but there’s something particularly disturbing about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry as it pertains immediately to our health, the health of our children and the health of our families and communities. We should all be more than concerned that the oath stating, “first do no harm” has been jettisoned entirely.

Giving legal indemnity to corporations (especially ones with felony backgrounds) is a recipe for guaranteed disaster. There should be a law against making such laws. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which gives liability protection to vaccine manufacturers needs to be overturned immediately and put in its historical place as an anathema to the proper drafting and passing of laws.

6. The Right to Question — the right to question should be unquestionable. We claim to value education and up until recently intellectual curiosity was considered a good attribute. When Covid came along all the sudden “doing your own research” aka reading was suddenly being demonized. Who has ever heard of such a thing? And how can the people discouraging critical inquiry consider themselves to be the intelligent ones? It’s adjacent to the question, “when were the censors the good guys in history?”

Questioning is good. Robust dialogue is good. The notion of sterilizing mistakes or incorrect ideas out of discourse is totalitarian. In fact, clarifying and the correcting of mistakes usually offers a great opportunity for education and enlightenment. Moreover, to attempt to gain an understanding even to venture into the taxonomy of an unfamiliar field or discipline does not mean that the inquirers suddenly become professionals in that field — no reasonable person would suggest that. It is simply to have gained some understanding in a new area. This is a good process and not a negative one.

As my friend Ryan Cristian of Last American Vagabond ( TheLastAmericanVagabond.com ) says at the end of every program, “Question everything.”

5. Freedom to Associate — the government has no right whatsoever to prevent us from seeing our families or friends when we are not engaged in criminal actions and are not meeting to engage in criminal conspiracies. Lockdowns (which varied in severity from country to country and county to county) were a flagrant violation of our natural rights. Just as the government cannot protect us from any act of God — the notion that they can protect us from a respiratory ailment by restricting our movements is not only blatant overreach, it’s medically and scientifically without merit.

The falsehood of the “asymptomatic carrier” was the fraudulent basis for movement restricting policies. It should be accepted, however, that policy makers have no influence, no sway whatsoever in regard to the virome. Even if they did, a declared emergency should not be grounds for the suspension or removal of our rights. Yet what transpired during Covid and the lack of resistance from the public that went along with it, has set the stage for future abuses.

4. Freedom of Religion — I feel an enormous spiritual feeling but I do not identify with any particular religion or religious text. My beliefs, however, as well as the beliefs or non-beliefs of every individual are irrelevant — our country, like every free society, allows for freedom of religion. It is not the job of the mayor, governor, president or any appointed or elected official to arbitrarily suspend the fundamental right to worship and practice one’s religion.

It makes no sense to impose policies to protect a religious person from illness, when most religions are rooted in the concept of preparing the practitioner for death. For most religious people their religious practices are part of their well being. It is not up to power brokers to determine when devout persons can practice their religions or when congregations can congregate.

Allowing liquor stores to remain open while churches and mosques were ordered closed, highlights the perfectly baseless and arbitrary nature of lockdown policies. (I cringe when I use the word “allow” because We The People should have never “allowed” the state to have as much as an impression that they could impose any of this unfounded rubbish.)

Just prior to Covid, religious exemptions for vaccines required to attend school were overturned in New York and California. (Looking back, that was a red flag and helped set the stage for the bio security State that was about to emerge.) How is that possible? How can the government arbitrarily decide that their rule is more powerful than your religious belief and conviction to God Almighty? Who do they think they are? Religious exemptions should never be overturnable.

3. Haste Makes Waste — Haste makes waste is a truism. It is well known that it is better to be well prepared than rushed. It’s a principle also known as the 6 P’s — proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

It’s better to be a well-rehearsed band than an under-rehearsed band. It’s better to be a well practiced basketball team (like the Spurs) than a team that hasn’t practiced enough. It’s better to be a well-prepared actor than an unprepared actor. It is better to have an experienced surgeon and not a medical student. Everyone knows that haste makes waste, yet somehow this axiomatic principle was disregarded in the case of “Operation Warp Speed.”

“Warp speed” implies mistakes. It implies lack of regulation and oversight. More than imply, it means — no long term safety data. It means rushed-to-market. It means “safe and effective” is inherently a lie because they didn’t have sufficient time to confirm its safety or effectiveness.

It’s mind numbing that not only did supposedly intelligent people insist that such a massive undertaking (Operation Warp Speed) could be executed without any noticeable reduction in quality, but then proceeded to aggressively insult and gaslight those who raised this most obvious concern.

Despite the notion that anyone who refused the experimental injections was doing so based on elaborate conspiracy theories, I spoke to many people who told me firsthand that their hesitancy or outright refusal was based on the simple fact that the whole thing was done too damn fast.

2. Body Sovereignty — sovereignty over one’s own body is the most fundamental of fundamental rights. It is the right from which all other rights emanate. If your body sovereignty is compromised, you are a compromised individual and you are not a free person. You may aspire to freedom, but you are not free.

Mandating Covid “vaccines” (products falsely marketed as such) was a violation of the Constitution†, the Nuremberg Code†† and first and foremost natural law. No person should be forced to eat anything, watch anything, participate in anything — least of all an invasive medical procedure — against their will. It’s incredibly sad that this has to be discussed or debated whatsoever in the United States or any modern society for that matter.

1. No means No — I have most certainly emphasized this in previous articles. I will exercise here the literary technique known as sufficient redundancy and reiterate that — No is the most important word in the dictionary. No is sacrosanct.

We teach our children, and rightfully so, that they always have the right to say No. If something doesn’t feel right — No. If you don’t feel safe — No. If you are being asked to compromise your dignity — No. The word — No — by itself, is a complete sentence. This principle, of always having the right to say No, does not have an expiration date. It’s not just for children. It is fundamental to human dignity.

It is an abomination, that the right to say No was violated across the whole of society. What a terrible example for our children, and if we don’t change things now — what a terrible inheritance for them as well.

Authored by James Bovard,

Blindfolds and systemic deceit are the death of self-government…

President Biden has been derided for being a Potemkin president, a figurehead in a vast charade portraying him actually running the government.  Biden was forced to withdraw from the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in June.   But is a Potemkin presidency being followed by a Potemkin election?

Biden’s expulsion from the presidential race did not herald the arrival of truth. Most of the media still tolerates pervasive secrecy on prime issues of the 2024 campaign.

In bygone times, elections were about self-government.  Nowadays, voters merely have a cameo role to sanctify the nearly boundless power of officialdom.  Every year, the federal government slaps a “secret” label on trillions of pages of information – enough to fill 20 million filing cabinets.  And since the government is automatically benevolent (if a Democrat is president), there is no need to trouble citizens with the grisly details of how they are being served.

At the same time Special Counsel Jack Smith is racing to fling all possible dirt at Trump before Election Day, each week we learn of new cover-ups designed to deceive Americans about how badly they have been misgoverned:

1. Biden administration has mostly succeeded in covering up the crime wave by illegal aliens ushered into the nation since 2021. Former Border Patrol Sector Chief Aaron Heitke testified to Congress last month that the Biden administration hid the adverse impact from deluging U.S. cities with illegal aliens, including those with terror ties.

2. The National Archives announced on Wednesday that it would delay until after the election the release of potentially damning records on Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings with his son and foreign wheelers-dealers – records that have been sought for more than a year by conservative lawyers and activists.

3. Biden’s Justice Department sought to bury all the tax charges against Hunter Biden but were thwarted thanks to courageous IRS whistleblowers.  Hunter’s guilty plea last month to the tax charges confirms that the Justice Department’s offer a wrist-slap plea bargain to Hunter last year was a shameless obstruction of justice.

4. Biden’s FBI last year created “a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers,” Newsweek reported. FBI whistleblowers have exposed the politicization of an agency that even secretly targeted traditional Catholics who prefer to hear mass in Latin. But the vast majority of FBI surveillance and entrapment abuses remain shrouded.

5. Team Biden is covering up both Trump assassination attempts. Biden appointees have stonewalled bipartisan congressional investigations into the abysmal Secret Service failures at Butler, Pennsylvania.  The Justice Department has indefinitely delayed hearings for Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old guy caught waiting to shoot Trump on his Florida golf course.  Delaying proceedings against Routh assures that Americans will not learn before the election whether the would-be assassin had ties to the CIA, Pentagon, State Department or other agencies that assisted Routh with his massively-publicized campaign to recruit foreign soldiers to fight for Ukraine.

6. The Biden administration continues covering up almost everything regarding its support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.  The best info Americans have received was thanks to a young military computer technician who leaked revelations that the Ukrainian military was in far worse shape than Team Biden claimed. Americans have been forced to pay hundreds of billions of dollars but are left in the dark regarding Biden administration machinations that risk pulling this nation into World War Three.

7. The House Oversight Committee this week subpoenaed DHS for its records on Tim Walz’s possible ties to the CCP after being contacted by a whistleblower.  There is zero chance that the Biden administration will release any of those records before Election Day.

8. Political convenience is practically the sole determinant of what Americans are permitted to learn nowadays.  After Biden dropped his re-election bid, the administration disclosed records showing that his son Hunter sought U.S. government handouts for Burisma when Joe Biden was Vice President.  That scandal was buried until Joe Biden was no longer politically relevant.

Is censorship the biggest X factor for this election? Four years ago, the presidential election may have been swung by the coverup of the damning revelations in Hunter Biden’s laptop.  The FBI and the CIA hustled to censor and defuse that story with false rebuttals in October 2020.  According to multiple federal court rulings, federal agencies tampered with the 2020 election by censoring millions of comments by Americans who raised doubts about the trustworthiness of mail-in ballots and other election procedures. Federal judge Terry Doughty noted that  “virtually all of the free speech suppressed was ‘conservative’ free speech.”  A federal appeals court issued an injunction prohibiting federal officials from acting “to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce . . . posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”

But the Supreme Court refused to recognize that the censorship victims had any legal standing and canceled the injunction.   Americans will likely have no idea how many muzzles and blindfolds were secretly attached by federal agencies and federal contractors before Election Day.

Don’t expect journalists to suddenly get hot to thwart those Biden cover-ups. When the media shrouded Biden’s mental debility, it directly endorsed de facto secret rule. How much effort has the New York Times or Washington Post or National Public Radio exerted to reveal who is actually exercising the supreme power nowadays? Exposing that issue could derail Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign so it is ignored. But ​​​​​Biden is as oblivious as ever. When asked by a reporter on Thursday about the situation in the Hurricane Helene storm zone, Biden replied that those states “are getting everything they need. They are very happy across the board.”

Earth to Uncle Joe?!?

But as long as Donald Trump is not elected next month, most of the Washington media doesn’t care who is in control. If the Wizard of Oz was a contemporary political campaign story, the media would overwhelmingly side with the guy behind the curtain.

As long as the Wizard recited “Orange Man Bad,” the media would cover up all his abuses.

But “informed consent” is a mirage if the feds blindfold voters.

As long as Team Biden keeps a lid on its worst outrages until Election Day, Democrats can snare four more year to abuse the Constitution, the law, and the American people. Unfortunately, self-government is not retroactive.

In what promises to be a major milestone in more than two-and-a-half years of war, Russia is closing in on the capture of a vital industrial asset: a Ukrainian coal mine that’s a cornerstone of the country’s steel industry. 

Owned by Ukrainian firm Metinvest, the modern facility — opened in 1990 — is Ukraine’s largest mine for producing coking-coal, a specific grade used to fuel blast furnaces. It’s near the village of Udachne, about 10 kilometers west of the city of Pokvrosk, which is itself a key supply hub in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Per the latest reports, the Russian army is reportedly just 8 to 12 kilometers east of Pokrovsk. Defensive lines have already been dug to Pokrovsk’s west, so Ukrainian units will have positions to drop back to if Pokrovsk falls.  

In an interview with The Economist, analyst Andriy Buzarov noted that the Russians don’t have to actually occupy the mine to remove it from Ukraine’s economic equation: They can do that by severing its power or destroying the principal road used to haul its product westward.  

Steel is one of Ukraine’s principal industries, accounting for about a third of exports before Russia’s invasion. At that time, Ukraine ranked 14th in global steel production; by last year, it had fallen to 24th place. This year, Metinvest expected to unearth 5.3 million metric tons of coal in the mine near Pokrovsk. 

Oleksandr Kalenkov, the head of Ukraine’s metals and mining industry lobbying group, explained the implications for the country’s steel industry when the mine falls under Russian control, telling Reuters it could slash projected 2025 steel production by upwards of 80%:

“We could make up to 7.5 million metric tons of steel by the end of the year and, for next year, we saw an increase in production to over 10 million, but if we lose Pokrovsk, then … we will fall to 2-3 million tons.”

It’s not just a matter of Ukraine switching to imports of the specialty-use coking coal. “We don’t know where to get coal if Pokrovsk is seized,” Urkraine coke association Ukrkoks head Anatoly Starovoit told Reuters. “It is difficult to bring it in by importing; today it is not so easy to bring it in by sea.” That’s because Ukraine’s ports are geared toward exports, to say nothing of military hazards. 

The handwriting was already on the wall...but Ukraine’s pending loss of this vital industrial asset will only accelerate growing Western resignation to the inevitability of a negotiated end to the bloody, US-led proxy war with Russia. 

Authored by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer via American Greatness,

Ronald Reagan’s query to the American people in his October 28, 1980, debate with incumbent President Jimmy Carter was so simple and so devastating that it is still employed today: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” While most Americans are far worse off today than they were four years ago, with rising prices, inflation, a hollow economy, and unchecked immigration, so too are the U.S., its allies, and its partner’s national security interests, which are far worse off than they were four years ago.

Four years ago, there was stability in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Now Europe’s “long peace,” that is, no major war in Europe since 1945, has been shattered by Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. This war has resulted in the deaths of over one million humans and the displacement of millions more. The Middle East is roiling with conflict due to Hamas’ October 7, 2023, unprovoked attack on Israel and its consequences—the Iranian-backed Houthis interdiction of international shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and ultimately unprecedented attacks from Iran against Israel with drones and missiles. The Indo-Pacific is rife with unrest principally due to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) hyper-aggression against key U.S. allies and partners like India, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and against the American people themselves.

The cause of this instability is the Biden-Harris administration’s ideological obsession to “manage America’s decline” and the subsequent policies they adopted in the last almost four years. The Biden-Harris administration failed to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This war is a humanitarian nightmare for all concerned; it is a stalemated conventional conflict, evincing an intensity of combat not seen in Europe since 1945. The war also entails the risk of nuclear escalation, the tremendous cost of which the U.S. and its NATO allies would not escape. In addition, this administration has fundamentally failed to support Israel by not holding Iran to account—even worse by providing Tehran the funding to expand their terrorism against Americans.

However, in the pantheon of Biden’s failures, it is towards the PRC that the Biden administration has made its greatest foreign policy fiascos. The Biden-Harris administration has continued the failed “Engagement” policies with the PRC that have aided the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at a time of great peril. The Biden-Harris administration ignores the existential nature of the CCP threat because it seeks to continue the Engagement school of thought through what we call the Biden-Harris administration’s “neo-Engagement” policy.

With the exception of the Trump presidency, Engagement has been the dominant U.S. approach to the PRC since Bill Clinton. It asserts that the PRC is not an existential threat to the U.S. Far from it—the Engagement school contends the Sino-American relationship should be cooperative. Any troubles may be addressed by more cooperation with the PRC and accommodation of the interests of the CCP to sustain that cooperation. In essence, the Engagers are appeasers. Unfortunately, their arguments are ubiquitous and dominate U.S. foreign policy toward the PRC. Engagement dominates Wall Street, foundations, think tanks, universities, media, Silicon Valley, K Street, major law firms, and government. Even after the fiasco of allowing a PRC intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance balloon to fly over the entirety of America and the conga line of Biden-Harris cabinet officials traveling to Beijing to kowtow before Xi Jinping, the nadir was the November 2023 meeting between Biden and Xi near San Francisco. Beyond the obsession by Biden-Harris to resume military-to-military exchanges despite the People’s Liberation Army’s increased threatening behavior, 400 of America’s richest business leaders attended a dinner with the PRC’s dictator—Xi Jinping. These “titans” of America’s economy gave the CCP dictator two standing ovations while Xi explained his vision of tyranny—on American soil—and how the American business elite could help him sustain it.

The failed Biden-Harris neo-Engagement policies have allowed the CCP to escape the costs of its many decades of misrule but also provided the window for the CCP’s hyper-aggression over the last four years. Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration has overseen and done nothing as the PRC built over 300 nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) silos in central and western China, upgraded the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) aboard their sea-based leg of their triad, expanded their ballistic missile submarine production facilities, and introduced a new nuclear bomber, the H-20. This aircraft very closely resembles the B-2 stealth bomber.  Additionally, the Biden-Harris regime has sat by as PLA Air Force H-6 bombers have for the first time flown nuclear bomber profiles with their Russian Long Range Aviation counterparts into the Alaskan Air Defense Identification zone.

By every metric, the CCP is flexing its strategic muscles by expanding its nuclear arsenal and strategic reach.  The PRC continues to agress relentlessly against U.S. national security interests. While the pace of their aggression is quickening, the Biden-Harris administration is cutting the size of the Department of Defense. For example, Biden-Harris continues to decommission more warships than it builds, as demonstrated by their Fiscal Year 2025 budget that procures just six warships, the lowest number of any budget submission since 2006.

This degradation of America’s maritime power is especially pernicious as the situation in the South China Sea, near Scarborough Shoal or Sabina Shoal, is dramatically worsening. Likewise, the PLA is increasing its pressure on Taiwan through unceasing operations to prepare for an invasion. In the past month, the PLAAF violated Japanese territorial waters for the first time ever. Moreover, the PLAN and Russian Navy sailed into the Gulf of Alaska, while it has been confirmed that PLA is supplying Russia with military weapons to aid Moscow in its war against Kyiv. There are also credible reports, including from the South Korean Minister of Defense, that the North Koreans are directly aiding the Russian war effort.

In his famous debate with Carter, Reagan also asked Americans if they believed America was as respected and whether America was as strong as four years ago. Once again, the answer to that question today is no. America was far more respected by its foes and was stronger four years ago than today. America was seen by its key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific as a far better, more reliable, and more confident ally than today. The result is that a Harris presidency would continue these neo-Engagement policies to embolden enemies and continue to punish allies and partners. Only a Trump presidency will end failed policies of neo-Engagement and return the U.S. to the Reaganesque certainty of the previous Cold War that “the U.S. wins, the CCP loses.”

***

James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure. The views expressed are their own.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) now covers forty years worth of data for how Americans households spend money.

That data includes how much the average “consumer unit” surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau spends on health insurance, which like many other things in the economy, has seen significant cost inflation over the past four decades.

The following chart, via Political Calculations blog, shows how that cost has changed from 1984, the first year for the CEX, through 2023, the latest, whose data was just released last month.

As you’ll see, over the past 40 years, there has been one major factor that has altered the trajectory for how much American households/consumer units pay on average for health insurance coverage.

Back in 1984, the first year for the CEX, American household consumer units paid an average of $370 for health insurance.

That figure grew steadily over the following years and by 2000, the average cost of health insurance for a U.S. household has risen to $980.

From 2000 through 2010, the average cost of health insurance grew faster, reaching $1,826 by 2010.

Had the 2000 through 2010 growth trend continued, we estimate the average amount American households would pay for health insurance in 2023 would be $2,927.

But it didn’t, thanks to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010.

It was implemented over several years, going into full effect in 2014.

The claimed goal of the law, as suggested by its name, was to make health insurance more affordable for Americans.

In 2023, the average cost of health insurance paid by American households has more than doubled what it was in 2010.

At an average $4,049 per household, this expense is more than 38% higher than the trend that existed in the decade before the Affordable Care Act became law.

The chart also indicates the cost “curve” for health insurance has bent upward since 2021, which has inflated more quickly over the last few years following 2020’s coronavirus pandemic.

Political Calculations blog will be featuring other aspects of how American consumer spending has changed over the past four decades using the latest CEX data in the weeks ahead.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Mexico’s Senate approved amendments in the constitution that give preference to state electricity firm CFE over other companies in dispatching electricity to the system.

The constitutional amendment was passed in the Senate with 86 votes in favor to 39 against. This met the requirement of a two-thirds majority of votes in favor of amending the constitution.

Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum continues the policies of her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to support and favor the state energy majors, including oil firm Pemex and the state-owned power company Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE).

The constitutional amendments favoring CFE will come into force after it passes a majority of state legislatures and is published in the official gazette.

Under the change, national grid operator Cenace will be required to take first and prioritize electricity from the power plants owned and operated by the state company CFE regardless of the price and whether it is more expensive than the electricity generated from private power producers.

The new Mexican Parliament is also moving to give the president more control over Pemex and CFE.

Despite the reclassification that would give the government a greater say in Pemex operations, the new government is in favor of the company working with private companies to develop the country’s oil and gas resources.

Mexico currently produces around 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil, down from a peak of 3.4 million bpd some 20 years ago.

Underinvestment has plagued the industry for years, which was the motivation for the Pena Nieto administration’s reforms that invited foreign players into the local industry.

When former president Lopez Obrador came into power, he did away with the reform, launching reviews of existing contracts with foreign entities on allegations of corruption.

As a result, Pemex has failed to increase oil production as planned by the government. In August, the latest month with available data, production dipped below 1.5 million bpd.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Politico cited a senior Senate aid and two sources in the Biden Administration to report on Wednesday that the US is much more afraid of an uncontrollable escalation sequence with Russia than with Iran due to the first’s nuclear capabilities.

As proof of this, the US has no qualms about shooting down Iranian missiles launched against Israel but won’t consider shooting down Russian ones launched against Ukraine, which has upset Zelensky and some of his compatriots who thus feel like second-class allies.

The difference between Russia/Ukraine and Iran/Israel in this regard accounts for the US’ different approach towards each pair.

As was explained last month in this analysis about why “Putin Explicitly Confirmed What Was Already Self-Evident About Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine”, the comparatively more pragmatic policymakers who still have the final say in Russia and the US have thus far managed to avoid the uncontrollable escalation sequence that their respective hawkish rivals want.

Here’s how they did it:

“[The US hawks’] comparatively more pragmatic rivals who still call the shots always signal their escalatory intentions far in advance so that Russia could prepare itself and thus be less likely to ‘overreact’ in some way that risks World War III. Likewise, Russia continues restraining itself from replicating the US’ ‘shock-and-awe’ campaign in order to reduce the likelihood of the West ‘overreacting’ by directly intervening in the conflict to salvage their geopolitical project and thus risking World War III.

It can only be speculated whether this interplay is due to each’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (‘deep state’) behaving responsibly on their own considering the enormity of what’s at stake or if it’s the result of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. Whatever the truth may be, the aforesaid model accounts for the unexpected moves or lack thereof from each, which are the US correspondingly telegraphing its escalatory intentions and Russia never seriously escalating in kind.”

There’s no equivalent balance of nuclear power between the US and Iran, with the most that Iran can do is launch saturation strikes against American bases in the region, not existentially threaten it like Russia can.

If Iran’s potential retaliation to Israel’s expected strike harms or kills some of the nearly 100-member team operating the US’ THAAD in the self-professed Jewish State, then the US could either take the hit, retaliate against Iranian-aligned Resistance groups in the region, or strike the Islamic Republic.

Regardless of whatever might happen, non-nuclear Iran is incapable of existentially threatening the US like nuclear-armed Russia could if the latter retaliated to the interception of its missiles by hitting targets inside of NATO, which could easily catalyze a possibly apocalyptic escalation sequence.

To be sure, there are indeed some US hawks who want to risk that scenario and the abovementioned comparatively less consequential one in West Asia, but their more pragmatic rivals are still able to stop them for now.

Authored by Kgatlhiso Darius Leshaba via The Mises Institute,

In the year 1949, the first issue of the socialist publication Monthly Review was released. Within the collection of essays, one stood out in particular. Notably, its author was none other than Albert Einstein. Somewhat misleadingly titled “Why Socialism?” the essay reads more like a critique of capitalism than a justification of socialism. In it, the brilliant physicist lays out his reasons for rejecting private property and briefly sketches out his vision for a moral and just society.

Now, 75 years after the first appearance of the essay, I believe a critical analysis is in order.

Einstein begins his essay by justifying his (and other non-economists) right to chime in on the debate about socialism. While I agree with the broad sentiment, the specific points strike me as worryingly naive. The first is that, due to the fact that since the history of most states is one of violence and coercion, conventional economic theory, as a product of the past “predatory phase” of human development, is ill-equipped to “throw…light on the socialist society of the future.”

This seems to imply that not only should non-economists’ opinions be considered just as valid as professional economists, but that the opinions of economists are tainted by the context of their formation, and thus not adequate to comment on the nature of the future socialist paradise. At some point or another, socialists must come to realize that the nature of their envisioned society must be investigated if they are going to avoid repeating the catastrophes of the 20th-century experiments. An analysis of the incentives of such a system is crucial for evaluating if such a system would indeed serve as an improvement to the current state of affairs. The only field of study with the tools for this is economics, in all its depth and breadth.

The second point made is one I wholly agree with, that economics as a science cannot choose ends, but can only inform the means for the attainment of desired ends. Thus, the question of what ends should be chosen lies outside the field of economic analysis, but the analysis of the means chosen for the attainment of desired ends is fair game.

Einstein then goes on to lay out a brief theory of the relationship between the individual and her society. The main point in what he terms the “crisis of our time” is that the willful dissociation of individuals from their group identities leads to a nihilistic isolation for which capitalist societies are to be blamed. Einstein seems to fail in recognizing society as an abstract concept representing numerous individuals and their various interactions, direct and indirect, across time.

Einstein then goes on to state that the modern individual depends wholly on “society,” however, this isn’t the entire picture. Since society is an abstract sum of individuals, it’s better to (at least partially) disaggregate the concept of society and understand that an individual’s interaction with society is ultimately just an interaction between individuals. One is not in a parasitic relationship with the society they belong to, the relationship is mutualistic. Man does not simply receive “food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language,” man must also provide something of value to society. It may, therefore, be true that the dependence of the individual on other people’s efforts is a fact of nature, but the opposite—that the relative success of other people’s efforts relies on the efforts of the individual—is true as well.

Einstein fails to realize that the pushback against the desires of the group often arises from coercive attempts to enforce those desires, rather than from a rejection of interdependence altogether. Einstein even makes the claim that the way people find meaning is by serving the desires of the group. There is an important qualification that is missing here—that if they do decide to serve the desires of the group, it must be voluntary and not coerced.

Here is where we begin to run into Einstein’s “Marxist” critiques of capitalism.

We start off with the Marxist exploitation theory, built on the back of the labor theory of value. Einstein says, “…what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces…”

The first problem we run into is the concept of value. It has been firmly established that economic value isn’t intrinsic, that, “The measure of value is entirely subjective in nature.” Value is not transferred somehow from labor to product. In fact, the direction of the imputation of value is exactly the other way around. The economic value of labor is determined by the value of the final product it aids in producing. Therefore, I agree with Einstein, worker pay isn’t determined by the “real value” of what they produce but only because it cannot be determined by something that doesn’t exist. Einstein also seems to believe in the outdated subsistence theory of wages which had long since been disproven by the time Einstein’s essay was published. 

Einstein then goes on to cite wealth inequality and the resulting distortion of the political landscape by private special interests. He is correct in that the market economy does not make people equal as there is no reason to expect it to do so. People are different, masters of different skills and trades (trades that are valued differently by consumers), leaving little reason to expect remuneration for their various services to be remotely equal. Rent-seeking doesn’t stop, however, just because resources are centrally controlled. Inequality isn’t unique to capitalism.

Einstein voices displeasure with the fact that most sources of information (media, education, etc.) are privately owned and sees this a limiting factor in individuals’ ability to make objective decisions and their ability to make effective use of their political rights. One would think that, having had to flee from a state which had taken total control of the media, Einstein would know that the criticisms he levies against private ownership of media and education are more effective against these institutions being centrally controlled. Absent a monopoly, private ownership of the media and schools allows for a pluralistic society, where people are more likely to encounter competing viewpoints, and thus does better in the quest for mitigating misinformation. This makes coming to objective conclusions more likely than if there was a single, centrally-owned and -controlled source of information.

Einstein then goes on to criticize the profit motive. “Production is carried on for profit, not for use” he says, not understanding the emptiness of his statement. Entrepreneurs produce goods that they believe consumers will find useful in satisfying their desires. If consumers judge the goods produced as useful, they patronize the business and the entrepreneur enjoys a profit. Thus, profit represents the entrepreneur’s success in providing goods and services that consumers find useful and valuable. Saying “production is carried on for profit” is just another way of saying production is carried on for the use of the consumers. I prefer not to comment on the faults of the Marxist theory of business cycles and simply let the record of history prove that there isn’t much of a relationship between the passage of time and the severity of depressions.

Einstein ends by saying that the only way he sees for eliminating these “evils” is through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an education system that is oriented towards “social goals.” With little discussion of the mechanisms of such a system, one gets the idea that Einstein hasn’t thought this matter through much. The ownership of the factors of production by “society” and their utilization in a “planned fashion” isn’t even demonstrated to be plausible. We are to take him by his word that such a system would improve our standard of living without any critical analysis. Einstein relegates the possibility of repression at the hands of the state to the final few sentences of his essay, ending with sentiments which echo the claim that state ownership of the means of production is not “real socialism.” Although he raises some pertinent questions, he provides no answers.

It is telling that many of these same arguments raised by Einstein are raised by disgruntled Zoomers with socialist sympathies.

It would almost seem as though, as brilliant a thinker as Albert Einstein was, he was unfamiliar with economic theory and evidence that ran counter to the Marxist narrative, much like modern-day naive college socialists. Even where we agree, such as the hand inequality plays in distorting politics, he fails to show that it’s uniquely under capitalism that power dynamics can be skewed.

This is because none of the criticisms levied can be laid down at the feet of capitalism, merely removing the market economy will not solve the great “evils” but only change the way these evils manifest themselves in society.

Authored by Liz Heflin via Remix News,

Germany continues to sell industrial goods to Russia, including machines for manufacturing vehicle and aircraft parts and ammunition, according to the Tagesschau news portal, which reported on an investigation conducted by broadcaster SWR.

Putin needs a constant supply of military equipment, and due to the sanctions imposed on Russia blocking imports, large parts of Russian industry have been transformed to cater to a war economy, producing military equipment, ammunition and spare parts as required. 

However, products from German mechanical engineering companies also continue to help out, with more than 300 machine deliveries for manufacturing everything from vehicle parts to ammunition made in Russia in 2023, often via Turkey, SWR research indicates. 

SWR was able to identify more than 30 German manufacturers whose machines were imported to Russia last year, many of them based in Baden-Württemberg, a traditional location for mechanical engineering.

In around two-thirds of the cases, the machines were imported to Russia via Turkey. Some Turkish middlemen involved have direct connections to Russia, while other companies there facilitating the shipments were founded by Russian entrepreneurs.

Videos and photos obtained by SWR prove just how extensively German machines are used by Russian military suppliers, including by Russian companies Parsek, Kamaz, NIR and Industrial Solutions. 

Most of the deliveries involved large industrial machines or so-called CNC machines, computer-controlled equipment that enables automated manufacturing.

These machines can cut steel, weld parts, and perform other functions for the production of defense equipment, such as vehicle/aircraft parts and ammunition.

Olena Yurchenko ,from the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, claims that 80 percent of CNC machines in Russia are now used in military production:

“With computer-aided CNC machines, they can produce much faster and more precisely, which is extremely important, especially in the weapons sector. This ultimately enables them to produce even more deadly weapons. And Germany is the market leader in the production of these machines, with a share of up to 30 percent in Russia,” she told the portal.

Read more here…