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from Forbes
Trump’s Pardons Are Meant To Normalize White-Collar Crime
Today President Trump pardoned seven people and commuted the sentences of four others. Most were white-collar criminals. Trump is normalizing pardons and white-collar crime so it won’t be such a surprise to the public when he pardons people like Roger Stone. It also gives a message to the public that white-collar crime is just the “price of doing business.” This is by design.
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from The Guardian (UK)
Mass grave shows how Black Death devastated the countryside
A mass grave containing the remains of dozens of victims of the Black Death offers chilling new evidence of the speed and scale of the devastation the plague brought to rural England, according to archaeologists. The grave, discovered in a remote corner of rural Lincolnshire, has been dated to the 14th century, almost certainly to the earliest and deadliest medieval outbreak of the disease in 1348-9. It contained the bodies of at least 48 men, women and children who were laid in a sandy pit within days of each other. DNA tests on the bodies found the plague pathogen, confirming how they died. About half the population of England was wiped out within 18 months by the 1348-9 pandemic.
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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California
2,500 Years Of The Usual Suspects
As competing powers gnaw at the last bleeding morsel of Syria—Idlib province on the Turkish border—what’s remarkable isn’t that these offspring of ancient empires are fighting, but that they’ve been fighting each other for millennia. No bursts of genocide or epochs of oppression could finish off the major players engaged: Arabs, Turks, Persians and, not least the last inheritors of Byzantium (represented by Vladimir Putin, self-proclaimed defender of Orthodox Christianity). Even second-string players with ancient roles remain in the fight, from Phoenicians (Palestinians) to Kurds (who so vexed Xenophon). And then there’s reborn Israel, which has been in rock fights since time immemorial.
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Eastern Wash. farmer invites Bloomberg to her farm after edited clip goes viral
An Eastern Washington farmer is inviting Michael Bloomberg to pay her an in-person visit after a video of the presidential candidate appearing to make negative comments about her profession surfaced online. The video has garnered thousands of likes and retweets, and appears to show Bloomberg making demeaning comments about farmers and factory workers while speaking at the University of Oxford in 2016. Alison Viebrock-Steveson, who owns and operates a farm in Wilbur, voiced her opinion on her popular Facebook page “Blessed Farmgirl.”
from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
Why Governments Hate Secession
States seek to perpetuate themselves by seizing more control of capital and human beings. Size makes this easier. And every regime would become a mega-state like China or the US if it could.
The Green Fatal Conceit: Why Physical Science Can’t Tell Us Proper Policy Goals
The so-called CLEAN Future Act is as poorly designed as its acronym. Like the Green New Deal, it consists of radical new spending proposals that the bill’s supporters would have liked for other reasons, and which aren’t even compatible.
Some Problems with Worker Productivity Stats
Government statistics on worker productivity combine many errors of aggregation such as "average prices" and the total purchasing power of money. So it's unlikely that productivity numbers tell us much that's useful.
Trump administration targets Russian oil company for helping Venezuela skirt sanctions
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions on a subsidiary of Russian oil company Rosneft for helping Venezuela evade sanctions on oil exports meant to squeeze the Maduro regime. The sanctions, which target the oil giant’s Switzerland-based brokerage firm, are the latest Trump administration effort to pressure Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro by choking off the flow of money to his government. A senior Trump administration official on Tuesday described Rosneft’s actions as “critical” to bolstering Venezuela's vital oil industry.
from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California
2,500 Years Of The Usual Suspects
As competing powers gnaw at the last bleeding morsel of Syria—Idlib province on the Turkish border—what’s remarkable isn’t that these offspring of ancient empires are fighting, but that they’ve been fighting each other for millennia. No bursts of genocide or epochs of oppression could finish off the major players engaged: Arabs, Turks, Persians and, not least the last inheritors of Byzantium (represented by Vladimir Putin, self-proclaimed defender of Orthodox Christianity). Even second-string players with ancient roles remain in the fight, from Phoenicians (Palestinians) to Kurds (who so vexed Xenophon). And then there’s reborn Israel, which has been in rock fights since time immemorial.
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from KXLY 4 News (ABC Spokane)
Eastern Wash. farmer invites Bloomberg to her farm after edited clip goes viral
An Eastern Washington farmer is inviting Michael Bloomberg to pay her an in-person visit after a video of the presidential candidate appearing to make negative comments about her profession surfaced online. The video has garnered thousands of likes and retweets, and appears to show Bloomberg making demeaning comments about farmers and factory workers while speaking at the University of Oxford in 2016. Alison Viebrock-Steveson, who owns and operates a farm in Wilbur, voiced her opinion on her popular Facebook page “Blessed Farmgirl.”
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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
Why Governments Hate Secession
States seek to perpetuate themselves by seizing more control of capital and human beings. Size makes this easier. And every regime would become a mega-state like China or the US if it could.
The Green Fatal Conceit: Why Physical Science Can’t Tell Us Proper Policy Goals
The so-called CLEAN Future Act is as poorly designed as its acronym. Like the Green New Deal, it consists of radical new spending proposals that the bill’s supporters would have liked for other reasons, and which aren’t even compatible.
Some Problems with Worker Productivity Stats
Government statistics on worker productivity combine many errors of aggregation such as "average prices" and the total purchasing power of money. So it's unlikely that productivity numbers tell us much that's useful.
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from POLITICO
Trump administration targets Russian oil company for helping Venezuela skirt sanctions
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions on a subsidiary of Russian oil company Rosneft for helping Venezuela evade sanctions on oil exports meant to squeeze the Maduro regime. The sanctions, which target the oil giant’s Switzerland-based brokerage firm, are the latest Trump administration effort to pressure Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro by choking off the flow of money to his government. A senior Trump administration official on Tuesday described Rosneft’s actions as “critical” to bolstering Venezuela's vital oil industry.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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Russia’s FSB ‘guided alleged assassin of Chechen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin’
Russia’s Federal Security Service trained and guided the alleged assassin of a former Chechen rebel in Germany, according to an investigation that is likely to stoke tensions between Moscow and European governments. Vadim Krasikov, 54, made numerous visits to secret Federal Security Service (FSB) training facilities and was in frequent contact with a Russian special forces veterans’ group, the Vympel Association, in the weeks before the murder, the Bellingcat investigative website found. The disclosure appears to be further confirmation that the Kremlin is prepared to attack opponents and “traitors” abroad, after the attempt by GRU military intelligence officers to poison the former MI6 informer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018.
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from The Times and The Sunday Times
London, UKRussia’s FSB ‘guided alleged assassin of Chechen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin’
Russia’s Federal Security Service trained and guided the alleged assassin of a former Chechen rebel in Germany, according to an investigation that is likely to stoke tensions between Moscow and European governments. Vadim Krasikov, 54, made numerous visits to secret Federal Security Service (FSB) training facilities and was in frequent contact with a Russian special forces veterans’ group, the Vympel Association, in the weeks before the murder, the Bellingcat investigative website found. The disclosure appears to be further confirmation that the Kremlin is prepared to attack opponents and “traitors” abroad, after the attempt by GRU military intelligence officers to poison the former MI6 informer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018.
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