Posted originally on the conservative tree house on December 15, 2022 | Sundance
Friends, in the late summer and fall of 2021 CTH warned of massive waves of price increases that would push inflation to record highs. We watched as each wave arrived almost on schedule throughout 2022, and as a direct result of Joe Biden energy and economic policy, prices necessarily skyrocketed.
In essence in 2021 we were warning about the expenditure side of the ledger that all working-class and fixed income families would experience. We advised to take every proactive measure possible to avoid future price increases.
Now, unfortunately, we begin moving those same warnings to the other side of the ledger; because as a natural consequence of consumer checkbook pain, the financial pressure always transfers to the income and employment side of the economic dynamic.
Keep in mind, retail sales are calculated in dollars spent by consumers. November 2022 retail sales as reported by the commerce department today [DATA pdf], reflect a 0.6% decrease in spending vs October. November data includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the traditional early holiday shopping. 0.6% less dollars were spent, despite prices being double digits higher than the prior year.
When the prices you are charging for goods and/or services are 10, 20, even as high as 60 percent more than prior year, yet your sales are running flat to negative – that means consumer purchases of those goods/services are substantially lower.
If you were selling 100 widgets for $1 each in 2021, you gross $100. If your widgets now sell for $1.25 and you gross $94 in 2022 sales, you have sold 75 widgets.
In 2021 you sold 100 widgets, in 2022 you sold 75 widgets, a difference of 25 widgets.
Everything attached to the raw material, creation, manufacturing, distribution and sale of those 25 missing widgets is no longer part of the economic activity associated with your widget business. You are now telling your suppliers you don’t need as many widgets, because they are not selling. You have lost 25% of your business in this scenario.
Everything associated with the drop in consumer spending now begins to downsize. Downsizing means less labor needed. This process triggers the economic impact shifting from the consumer sales side of the ledger to the income side of the ledger for employers, employees and workers.
If this consumer spending trend continues, and there is absolutely no reason to think it will reverse, we are entering a phase of serious financial instability for the American worker, at a scale that will dwarf the 2006/’07 and ’08 recession.
I am not a doomsayer pundit on economic matters. I am a proactive planner on economic forecasts. With consumer credit costing more, with fed interest rates climbing, with import orders cancelled, with shipping costs dropping, with consumer spending contracting, with fewer units moving, with inventories climbing, all of the data only points in one direction.
Serious consumer defaults are looming.
Government policy has been hammering the demand side of the economy, proclaiming -falsely- that excessive consumer demand was the cause of inflation. This game of economic pretending is about to get very serious.
Consumer spending, as measured in actual units created and purchased in the economy, has been contracting since the third quarter of 2021 (started June, July, August ’21). Simultaneously, consumer spending as measured in actual dollars spent to purchase food, fuel and energy, has been skyrocketing. This is a supply side inflationary cycle with no soft landing.
(Wall Street Journal) – U.S. retail spending and manufacturing weakened in November, signs of a slowing economy as the Federal Reserve continues its battle against high inflation.
November retail sales fell 0.6% from the prior month for the biggest decline this year, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Budget-conscious shoppers pulled back sharply on holiday-related purchases, home projects and autos. Manufacturing output declined 0.6%, the first drop since June, the Fed said in a separate report.
The Fed on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate 0.5 percentage point to a 15-year high and signaled plans to continue lifting rates through the spring. Fed officials have increased rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s to cool the economy and bring down inflation, which is running near a 40-year high.
“Most households are acting strategically, planning for a road ahead that may be more difficult to traverse, with higher interest rates, the housing slump, and ongoing inflation—and the very real possibility of a recession,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail consulting firm Customer Growth Partners. (read more)
Businesses are going to start cutting expenses in order to survive.
The number one expense for almost all businesses is the labor cost.
Non-essential and high wage labor is going to get removed first.
California has infected the United States as a whole for its insane policies have led to contagions that have unleashed a serious crime wave nationwide. Just Google “Shoplifting in San Francisco” and you will find more than 100,000 hits. This has become a real contagion spreading nationwide. You will also find many YouTube videos showing people just walking in and stealing whatever they want. This has escalated to whole gangs walking into an SF Walgreens or CVS and actually emptying the shelves. They are not prosecuted and they just walk out. At least one thief rode their bike into the store and departed the same way.
What is erupting is many current and former CEOs have issued warnings that this crime wave in California has spread to New York and many other cities. They are warning that this increase in retail thefts across the United States will contribute to INFLATION forcing higher prices, but it is also impacting areas as stores just give up and close. In fact, in June of 2021, nearly 50% of small businesses remained closed. Walgreens has been closing down stores in San Francisco on a grand scale. Between this and all the illegal aliens learning they do not have to pay for things in San Franciso, what was a nice safe city has turned into a place that is no longer the hot spot for tourists.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 14, 2022 | sundance
As we have often discussed on these pages, inflation would ultimately moderate and plateau not because prices were dropping but rather because of the calendar cycle.
As the economy cycles through a year of large price increases, the current inflation rate cycles through to the period when prices first increased. This calendar cycle means continued price increases are lower as a percentage and thus the inflation rate appears to modify despite prices continuing to rise. [BLS Report]
This scenario, prices remaining high and continuing to climb – yet lower as a percentage, now provides the justification for the federal reserve to state inflation is moderating.
(Via NBC) – Amid signs that price growth in the U.S. economy is rapidly cooling, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was slowing the pace of its rate-hiking program designed to tackle inflation — but that more hikes were still on the table.
The Federal Open Market Committee said it was increasing its key federal funds rate by 0.5%, after announcing four-straight 0.75% hikes at its most recent meetings. In its Wednesday statement, the Fed said it continues to target an inflation rate of 2% over the long term and would continue to increase the federal funds rate to do so.
“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the committee said.
But bringing down inflation is likely to come at the cost of higher unemployment in the short term: The Fed said it now projects the 2023 unemployment rate to average 4.6%, equating to hundreds of thousands of more jobless workers compared with the current rate of 3.7%.
The Labor Department on Tuesday reported that annual inflation clocked in at 7.1% in November — the lowest reading in more than a year. While it is still high compared to the 2% level at which the Federal Reserve typically seeks to hold down inflation, the most recent number signals that the galloping price growth earlier this year is fading. (read more)
Prices will never drop because the supply side pressure from a new energy policy remains as the driving factor.
Demand has dropped throughout 2022 as the U.S. economy, gauged in units of product sold, has contracted. Consumers are not buying non-essential goods or services as the costs of housing, fuel, heating, electricity, overall energy and food prices continue rising.
Despite the economic contraction that is lowering energy use, rapidly increasing energy costs continue to be the driving force of inflation.
This period of depressed economic activity will continue as unemployment begins to become problematic. As a nation we will remain in this economic malaise as long as Green New Deal, Build Back Better, energy policy is maintained.
On the positive side the economic shrinking is reversable with new energy policy; however, the opportunity to make that change is several years away. In the interim, the cost of living will remain the biggest challenge for the foreseeable future, and the inbound open-border migration will keep wages depressed.
Under the economic program of Joe Biden wages must be depressed in order to avoid production inflation (higher labor costs) from piling atop the energy policy inflation. Thus, the border influx will continue.
The gap between the haves and have nots is also going to explode in the next five years.
COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, I just want to congratulate you on creating Socrates. I am a real estate aficionado and Socrates has beaten the Case-Shiller Index which peaked in June of 2022 and even the Redfin Index which peaked in May 2022. Socrates peaked at a high in December 2021 ahead of everyone. Your model has shown a 34% drop into October where everyone is saying a 20% drop by the end of next year is likely. I just wanted to write because you and Socrates have beaten everyone in the real estate forecasting business and you do not even make that a big deal. Socrates is amazing.
I just wanted to share that because you do not even bother pounding your chest about real estate.
Thank you so much
LR
REPLY: Socrates is forecasting so many aspects of the world economy I do not have the time to pound my chest and if I did, I would probably end up in the hospital for it gets so many things right. It covers a fair sampling of real estate around the world and I do know we have many major real estate companies tuning in. Thank you for your comment. I have not had the time to look at either of those two indices as of yet.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 12, 2022 | Sundance
It’s subtle like a brick through a window when you have the bigger picture in mind.
Joe Biden and Canada’s Justin Trudeau are in ideological alignment, willing to destroy the entire North American economy as they construct the new climate change energy systems for the U.S and Canada. However, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO) has already indicated -including direct statements to Joe Biden at the White House– that he is not willing to put the Mexican economy into collapse and try to engineer an economic future on solar panels and windmills.
That puts Mexican President AMLO in the crosshairs of a unified climate change agenda as outlined by the World Economic Forum and western leadership under the guise of the Build Back Better agenda. In essence, AMLO goes from socialist hero of the unionized left to becoming a target. CTH has been saying we need to watch carefully how this plays out because a great deal of the western economic agenda hangs in the balance.
Now that AMLO has taken a pragmatic position on energy development {Go Deep} his lack of alignment means the apparatus of the United States government, the proverbial Eye of Sauron, will target him. Not coincidentally, the public relations firm for the deepest part of the interventionist intelligence apparatus, the Washington Post, now outlines AMLO as the specific person responsible for the explosion in fentanyl use.
(Washington Post) – […] A new Mexican leader rejected the $3 billion anti-narcotics agreement that had spanned three U.S. presidencies, known as the Mérida Initiative. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a veteran leftist who took office in December 2018, argued that the drug war strategy had sent homicides spiraling in Mexico while failing to curb U.S. demand.
The sniffer flights stopped. Águila was sidelined and his battle-hardened commandos were reassigned. López Obrador rebuffed U.S. offers for new drug-detection technology. Mexico shut down a pivotal base where the special forces had worked with U.S. agents. It even took away the parking spot for the DEA’s plane at an airport outside Mexico City. (read more)
The Washington Post defining ALMO as “a veteran leftist” as if that is against their interests is rather funny. The article walks through AMLO, a devout Mexican nationalist, trying to remove the influence of the U.S. government, and by extension contributing to the explosion of cross-border drug trafficking.
To accept the ‘AMLO is the cause of U.S. drug deaths’ narrative is to ignore the Biden administration effort to weaken the Southern U.S. border, but that’s a mere detail when you are constructing a narrative that has deeper intentions than appear on the surface. The bigger picture is shaping a narrative intended to create AMLO as an enemy of the American people.
Nice country you got there AMLO, it’d be a shame if something happened to it… Now, about that oil, coal and natural gas use…
Without a doubt this narrative building will escalate, step by step until pressure mounts and AMLO acquiesces to join the economic model demanded by the WEF as executed by the United States through Biden energy policy. There are trillions at stake and multinational corporate laundry operations to maintain.
Just keep watching… look for how the Biden administration specifically messages toward and around Mexico.
Mexico.
Mexico is in a position to get Brazil’d.
I’m fairly confident we are going to hear a lot more about Mexico very soon.
The ideologues in the Biden administration will not accept Mexico continuing to exploit cheap natural energy products like oil, coal and gas. As the USA and Canada punish citizens with inflation and massive economic consequences from Green New Deal energy policy, they cannot allow Mexico to be a source of stable low-priced goods and services. Amid other economic outcomes, the next-door neighbor contrast would be too politically damaging.
We can expect the Biden administration to work with Wall Street corporations on a level of economic targeting of Mexico similar to the western alliance sanctions against Russia. It will be extremely interesting to see just how strong AMLO can be in the face of serious threats from the USA and Canada.
I’m not talking about little threats, or ordinary economic pressure points; watch closely how the U.S threats are established. The ideologues around Joe Biden will seek to destroy AMLO if he does not go along with the energy change effort.
Watch this closely. The leftist hypocrisies are going to be off the charts as they target the Mexicans for punishment. (source)
Posted originally on the CTH on December 11, 2022 | Sundance
Stellantis is a multinational automaker contracted for the electric version of the Jeep Cherokee. Citing high costs to produce electric vehicles, on Friday Stellantis announced a decision to idle the Belvedere, Illinois plant starting on Feb. 28, 2023, and notified 1,350 workers of the layoffs.
(Via Fox) […] “This difficult but necessary action will result in indefinite layoffs, which are expected to exceed six months and may constitute a job loss under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. As a result, WARN notices have been issued to both hourly and salaried employees,” it said. “The company will make every effort to place indefinitely laid off employees in open full-time positions as they become available.”
Hundreds of workers are expected to be laid off when automaker Stellantis closes an assembly plant in northern Illinois early next year, citing the challenge of rising costs of electric vehicle production.
The company, which employs about 1,350 workers at the plant in Belvidere, Illinois, said the action will result in indefinite layoffs and it may not resume operations as it considers other options.
Stellantis said the industry ‘has been adversely affected by a multitude of factors like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the global microchip shortage, but the most impactful challenge is the increasing cost related to the electrification of the automotive market.’
The Belvidere plant, produces the Jeep Cherokee SUV, will be idle starting on February 28, 2023, Stellantis said. The plant in Toluca, Mexico will now produce the vehicles. (read more)
One aspect of this move that deserves additional attention is the U.S. and Canada focus on new energy policy, against the backdrop of Mexico telling the Biden administration the USMCA partner was going to continue development of traditional oil, coal and natural gas energy production.
Should Mexico continue to maintain a more traditional energy policy, they will likely create a greater cost incentive for all manufacturers. With electricity rates skyrocketing in the U.S. and Canada, any energy dependent manufacturer would see an additional advantage to production in Mexico.
It will be worthwhile watching this dynamic closely and seeing what type of pressure the Biden administration will apply to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador to fall in line.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 8, 2022 | Sundance
It is always worth a reminder when reviewing anything from Blackrock, that the institutional investment firm has strong ties to almost every sphere of White House policy.
Today Blackrock is warning of severe economic conditions looming, the unspoken origin traces to the collective western economic shift in energy policy, aka “Build Back Better.”
As noted in the Blackrock warning, under the auspices of inflation control, central banks can try and shrink economic activity – but they are limited. Organically, economies will free fall once the full weight of BBB energy policy accumulates.
(Business Insider) – […] A worldwide recession is just around the corner as central banks boost borrowing costs aggressively to tame inflation — and this time, it will ignite more market turbulence than ever before, according to BlackRock.
The global economy has already exited a four-decade era of stable growth and inflation to enter a period of heightened instability — and the new regime of increased unpredictability is here to stay, according to the world’s biggest asset manager.
That means policymakers will no longer be able to support markets as much as they did during past recessions, a team of BlackRock strategists led by vice chairman Philipp Hildebrand wrote in a report titled 2023 Global Outlook.
“Recession is foretold as central banks race to try to tame inflation. It’s the opposite of past recessions,” they said. “Central bankers won’t ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. Equity valuations don’t yet reflect the damage ahead.” (read more)
This type of macroeconomic prediction should not come as a surprise to most CTH readers, because we have been outlining the natural conclusion of consequence.
Once the decision was collectively made to shrink the use of oil, coal and natural gas for energy development, the subsequent inflationary impact would lead to a need to shrink economic activity. Raising interest rates to shrink demand does make the economy contract; however, the energy driven supply side inflation continues.
Nothing can stop supply side inflation, except a massive decline in energy use.
A severe reduction in energy use, similar in scale to the energy use reduction when pandemic lockdowns were in full effect, can only lead to the same overall economic conditions as present within the lockdown. Which is to say, almost no economic activity.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 4, 2022 | Sundance
Appearing on CBS with Margaret Brennan, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama’s fellow traveler and wingman in the fundamental change process, stated his belief the progressive movement and Biden administration has adequately prepared the nation to “absorb” the political violence that may surface as the result of an arrest of former President Donald Trump.
The rather remarkable admission and statement comes at approximately 06:30 of the video interview below where Margaret Brennan reads her prepared script and questions Eric Holder about such a divisive decision by a comprehensively corrupt U.S. justice system. The statement also comes on the heels of an 11th circuit appeals court ruling that removed the court ordered ‘Special Master’ in the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case.
In the Mar-a-Lago case the 11th circuit court stated if the search warrant was legally predicated, and if the search warrant was legally executed, then all of the proceeds from the search warrant were legally valid as investigative outcomes – and no special master is needed. However, President Trump is not allowed to see the search warrant, nor are his lawyers allowed to see the predicate affidavit that underpins the search warrant, and they are not permitted to see what documents were seized by the FBI.
In essence, if the secret and general warrant was legal, then all seizure is legal, but you are not allowed to see the secret and general warrant. Former AG Eric Holder rejoices in this judicial ruling as he evaluates the ability of the nation to “absorb” an arrest of Donald Trump based on that justice system position. WATCH:
If you read between the lines, and know how Holder (Obama Inc) operate, you can see what Obama structured Deputy AG Lisa Monaco has to do. Monaco will coordinate the timing of the arrest and indictment of Hunter Biden to coincide with the arrest and indictment of President Trump. This will provide the narrative of blind justice the DOJ will attempt to leverage to stop national reaction.
There’s actually a lot in this interview. Eric Holder doesn’t surface accidentally; he is preparing the Lawfare landscape.
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to former Attorney General Eric Holder. He now heads up the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. And he has a book, “Our Unfinished March,” which examines the current state of America’s democracy. Welcome back to the program.
ERIC HOLDER: Good to see you, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I have a number of things I want to get to with you. But I want to start on something I know is immediate this week. An organization that you run that we mentioned here that focuses on redistricting is involved in a Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper. It’s going to be heard on the seventh of this week. And it boils down as I understand it to the question of what the Constitution means when it assigns state legislatures the task of regulating elections. That sounds really wonky, but you phrased it as the future of democracy being at stake. What are you worried is actually going to happen here?
HOLDER: Yeah, this case is all about something called the independent state legislature doctrine. It’s a fringe theory that North Carolina Republicans are trying to use to make sure that the North Carolina Republican legislature has the sole responsibility of doing redistricting in the state and excluding from that determination the state court system. It is something that if the Supreme Court goes along with it, would really upend our system of checks and balances. And it’s for that reason that I am extremely concerned. It is a fringe theory, this is something that if the Court I think does the right thing, you should have a nine to zero opinion by the court that rejects this notion of this independent state legislature doctrine that has been rejected by conservative scholars, by practicing Republican lawyers, by former Republican judges, and by this conference of state supreme court justices, as well. This is a very, very dangerous theory. It would put our system of checks and balances at risk.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So there were a number of Democratic senators who actually filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not even to hear the case. So there are some heavy hitters here saying don’t even talk about it. What does that tell you about the potential harm here? I mean, is there value in the Supreme Court hearing this and striking it down? Or does them hearing it at all indicate something more to you?
HOLDER: Yeah, it’s hard for me to see how this case was ever taken by the Court. I think the better thing would have been for the court to simply have rejected it. But now having taken the case, I would hope that the Court would drive a stake through this notion of this independent state legislature doctrine and get it off the- off the books and out of our consideration, once and for all. It truly is, I cannot emphasize this enough. It truly is a fringe theory that should result in a nine to zero rejection of the- of the theory.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So we mentioned you’re working on redistricting. Democrats are suing to overturn congressional maps in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio and Texas. I read a quote from you in the Washington Post that said the work you’ve been doing on redistricting has paid off in the most recent midterms. Do you think that your legal battles will help Democrats make gains in 2024? What are you trying to say there?
HOLDER: Yeah, I think that what we have seen, there been studies that said that we have had the most fair redistricting process in the last 40 years as a result of the work that we’ve done. 75% of the redistricting is considered to be fair, which also means that 25% of it is unfair, and that is still problematic. I think, for instance, the House of Representatives is going to be in play for the entirety of this decade, very contrary to where it was in the past decade where after the successful Republican gerrymandering that occurred in 2011 and in 2012, it was really difficult for Democrats to take the House back. I think Democrats will be able to take the House back as early as 2024. But it doesn’t ensure what we have done doesn’t ensure the Democrats are going to hold on to the House for the entirety of the decade. It will be for the American people to decide. Fairness will reign in that determination.
MARGARET BRENNAN: When you were last on this program in May you shared at the time that you had changed your mind recently that you did believe that the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland should hold former President Trump accountable for his actions. You previously thought it would be too divisive for the country. Now, where we are with this special counsel, what is your assessment? And how should Merrick Garland, who has to ultimately decide, weigh the question of a risk to political violence in this country from any decision he makes regarding the former president?
HOLDER: Well, I think the Attorney General has said it quite well, that he’ll make the determination without fear or favor. There is- Everybody has to be held accountable for the same system. The determination that he’s going to have to make will have to be based on the facts and the law. And we’ll just have to deal with the consequences. The reality is that if he makes a determination one way or the other, it is going to be divisive. And so the best thing simply is to make sure that everybody who is under consideration for possible criminal treatment, including the former president, is treated just like every other American. And that’s what that opinion out of the Circuit Court this week essentially said that you can’t craft things. As a district court judge you can’t craft things for a former president that don’t exist for regular American citizens. Treat everybody in the same way, make the determination based on the facts and the law. And the United States, I think, has the capacity to absorb a possible indictment and to deal with it fairly and to get on with the business of the country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: As someone who’s been an attorney general, I wonder as well, how you think about the case before the U.S. District Attorney in Delaware regarding President Biden’s son Hunter. CBS has reported the FBI has sufficient evidence to charge him with tax and gun related crimes. How would you handle this? A plea deal? Is the Attorney General boxed in to take a hard-line position because of working for the President?
HOLDER: No, I mean, you have- they left in place, the Republican, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Delaware to consider the case. You’ve got career lawyers working on it, career FBI agents. You want to listen to their recommendations and then again, make a determination based on the facts and the law. The defendant should not be treated any more harshly because of who he is, who he is related to, should not be given breaks because of who he is or who he is related to. He should be treated as former President Trump should be treated, just like any other American citizen. If there is culpability, that person should be held liable for his or her acts. And if there is not a basis for a case, a case should not be brought.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But it will ultimately come to the Attorney General’s desk.
HOLDER: That’s certainly the way I would have run the Justice Department. And my guess is also that that would be something that Merrick Garland will be doing as well. That determination will be made I suspect in Washington, D.C.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. General Holder, thank you very much for your time today. [End Transcript]
On the election stuff…. Holder is moving to phase 2
REFERENCE and CONTEXT is critical to understanding.
PHASE 1 – After Eric Holder left the Obama administration as Attorney General, he was hired by the State of California to defend against the Trump administration in early January 2017 (LINK).
Why?
When Eric Holder left the Obama administration, his firm was contracted by California during a process of linking the motor vehicle registration files to the Secretary of State voter registration system. Holder was advising on part of a technology system being constructed to bridge the DMV and SoS offices. You might know this as a “Motor/Voter” process. However, former AG Eric Holder had a very specific function in the construction of this technology bridge.
The process of adding voters to the registration rolls when they receive or update their driver’s license was seen as an opportunity to expand the voter rolls. Making the voter rolls as big as possible is the key to the utilization of mass mail-out balloting. I will skip the part where California started giving illegal aliens drivers licenses for a moment – you can obviously see how that would play with motor/voter rolls – instead I am choosing just to focus on the specifics of the Holder aspect.
The DMV needed to connect to the SoS office. This was simply a part of a tech system that needed to be built. CTH has previously spoken with the lead engineer, a member of a very small technology group, who worked in the California information technology (IT) unit that was tasked with building the system that connected the DMV to the SOS. [NOTE: I invite the state of California to sue me as they will likely claim what you are about to read is not true.]
In the process of connecting the two state networks together, there needed to be a “flag”, essentially a check box, where the applicant to the DMV would attest to being legally authorized to vote. It is a positive affirmation, a check box, that says the Driver’s License holder affirms they are legally eligible to vote. That affirmation (the technical flag in the process), when affirmed, then transmits the information to the SoS office with the DL operator identity, and the California driver is automatically added to the SoS rolls and registered to vote.
During the time when Eric Holder was the legal counsel for the California Secretary of State, the technology team was constructing the internal data processing systems.
The lead engineer in the unit was instructed to code the data transfer in such a way that even if the “check box” was left unchecked, the registration data would transmit from the DMV to the SoS office.
Essentially, instead of only those who affirmed their legal eligibility by checking the box, everyone -including those who did not check the box- would get a DL and would automatically have their information transmitted to the SoS office. Everyone who received a driver’s license or state issued id was automatically going to be registered to vote, regardless of their legally authorized status. That request led the engineer to contact me.
I wrote about it, published the details, then the engineer freaked out as he/she realized there was only a very limited number of people who could expose the issue. He/She was worried about his/her safety and family and asked me to remove the article. This background is how I know the details of who, what, when and why the California mass mailing ballot process was being constructed.
In the 2018 midterm elections we all watched the outcome of that process surface in the weeks following election day. As each day passed more and more California mail-in ballots were being counted and day-by-day Republicans who won on election day 2018 watched their lead evaporate.
What happened in the California 2018 midterm election surrounding state-wide ballot distribution, collection (harvesting) and eventual presentation to the counting and tabulation facilities, was the BETA test for the 2020 covid-inspired national ballot mailing process.
The outcome we are seeing from the 2022 midterm ballot collection program was not just similar to the 2020 general election ballot collection program, it is a direct outcome of the refined BETA test from 2018. Now we have multiple states following the California mass distribution of ballots approach. Washington state, California, Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, there’s a long list.
In many states mass mailing of ballots is now codified in election law. Activist election lawyer Marc Elias now coming in behind the construction team of Eric Holder with the legal arguments to support the ballot collection programs.
The Importance of Election Rolls – As you can see from the California initiation point (Motor/Voter), in order to most effectively use the mass distribution of ballots as an electioneering process you first need a massive state secretary voter file in order to generate, then mail, the physical ballots.
Remember, votes require people – ballots require systems.
Any institutional system that can link people into the SoS system to generate a larger registration file for ballot distribution is a net positive. The key point is not to generate voters, the key is to generate ballots – the more the better. Mass printing of ballots is the origin of the electioneering process.
Any state or federal system that links a physical identity to the secretary of state voter rolls is good. Any system, like the USPS postal change of address system, that would remove physical identities from the state voter rolls is not useful. The goal is to maximize the number of systems that generate registration, that eventually generates ballots.
Beyond the Driver’s License issue, it’s everything. Sign up for public assistance, get registered to vote. Sign up for state benefits, get registered to vote. Sign up for a state id, get registered to vote. Sign up for state college, get registered to vote. Sign up for a grant, get registered to vote. Sign up for unemployment, get registered to vote. Sign up for any state system and get registered to vote. Get married, change names, change addresses, etc, that’s how the voter rolls expand and that’s how the massive distribution of ballots is created.
The states then fight against anything, any effort, any process, that would purge voter rolls or fix incorrect voting rolls. To use the new electioneering system, the system operators need ballots created, they no longer need votes. They need ballots.
Downstream from this process that’s where you find the “ballot submission assistance” programs. This is where the local community networks, regional activist groups and widespread community organizers come into play. Instead of advertising or the previous electioneering systems around candidate promotion and Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts, the majority of donations to the DNC are now used in the ballot assistance programs. This was phase 1.
PHASE 2 – What Eric Holder is describing as his “victories so far”, is the codification of phase 1 together with controlling the geographic process for ballot collection.
Forget votes. Congressional districts (CD’s) need to be looked at as ballot gateways.
Zip codes are where the importance exists for phase 2.
On a congressional district level, the problem for ballot use is the lack of ballots in certain areas. Moving forward, ballots that DNC activists can gather and control need to come from geographic regions where they can impact congressional representation. CD’s now need to be looked at as district mail regions to modify so that zip codes can determine election outcomes.
With ballot collection and assembly as the new process, congressional districting maps are no longer important from a representation standpoint, now the priority needs to be zip code representation.
Mass distribution ballots need to go to addresses in zip codes in order for them to be harvested to change the congressional district representation.
Now that elections are based on ballots and not votes, zip code control is where the action is.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America