Retail relies on the holiday season for the bulk of its revenue. In fact, a quarter of all retail spending in the US occurs in the last two months of the year. Numerous retailers have already downgraded their forecasts for the holiday season, and therefore, overall revenue estimates will go down. I reported that early indications of Halloween spending amid inflation were cause for concern. People were still willing to spend on the holiday, but everything cost significantly more, and availability was limited.
Two weeks ago, reports were coming in of hiring halts, but now mass layoffs are suddenly appearing in the news. Amazon plans to fire 10,000 employees this week alone. This is a steep mass layoff that represents 3% of corporate employees and 1% of the entire workforce. This is the largest layoff in the company’s history.
Other retailers have announced layoffs as well, and this is not limited to the US. E-commerce giant Alibaba also laid off nearly 10,000 workers this past August due to poor numbers. AliExpress eliminated 40% of its entire workforce and cited supply chain disruptions as the main culprit, as it was one of the most popular shopping apps in Russia.
Gap Inc. will eliminate 500 corporate roles in the US and Asia. Peloton parted ways with 500 people in October in its most recent round of layoffs. Shopify eliminated 10% of its staff in July and plans to make additional cuts. Nordstrom fired 200 employees from a warehouse distribution center. Wayfair eliminated 900 positions after a hiring freeze in May. Mass layoffs are becoming a common occurrence during a time when retailers usually hire additional staff.
The supply chain crisis is to blame. FedEx plans to furlough employees right before the busy Christmas season. Their revenue was up 21% last quarter, but shipments fell 5% in the same time period. Overall inflation and wage losses are a positive sign for the Fed but a complete disaster to individuals and their families. Expect sales as retailers attempt to eliminate outdated inventory to make room for delayed shipments.
The Republican has won the House. It took more than a week for the Associated Press to determine the GOP had won the 218 seats necessary to control the chamber. Never in my entire life have I ever witnessed an election take this long to find out who won. This is all the paper absentee ballots where my own staff could right a national voting program in less than one month and you do not need the paper nonsense. Dead people will not be able to vote and there will be no harvesting of ballots.
While the press wants to portray this as an underwhelming performance for the Republicans when they should have won hands-down considering the national decline in confidence in Biden that normally would have worked to their advantage, the corruption in the election process has been itself unprecedented.
Our computer was correct – there would be no red wave. The report ($14.95) provided our Timing Arrays forecasting politics out for 12 years. The Republicans would take the House but not the Senate for this would be an extremely tight election due to the corruption. The whole point of the press calling for a red tidal wave was to make sure Republicans felt their vote was not needed so why bother? That was a strategy to keep that up in the press. I saw the same tactic was used to get Jimmie Carter elected. I remember that well for even I concluded it was so overwhelming I did not vote – they didn’t need me. Then you woke up with a surprise nobody expected.
This will now contribute to 2023 where we see rising civil unrest and the Republicans will bring impeachment proceedings against Biden and dive into the Hunter Laptop like never before. The Democrats are about to find out what goes around – comes around. All civility in politics has been tossed out the window.
This is the decline and fall of America. The country is now so divided, there is simply no possible way to ever bring it back to the middle. The Democrats still hate Trump and will push to discredit all Republicans using Trump. The hateful way politics has emerged ensures there is absolutely NOBODY on a white horse who will save the day. It will be soon to just turn out the lights.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 15, 2022 | Sundance
The White House is urging Nancy Pelosi to utilize the lame duck congressional session and construct a massive omnibus spending bill that will wrap Ukraine funding, COVID spending and a federal budget extension via continuous resolution. The request for Ukraine funding is an additional $38 billion.
Federal funds to support FEMA and hurricane recovery efforts will likely be part of the bargaining chips. Essentially, the sausage ingredients are: if congress doesn’t give Zelenskyy more money, then DeSantis will not get federal financial assistance.
If you don’t support Ukraine, you’re a Russian operative.
WASHINGTON DC – The Biden administration sent a letter to Congress on Tuesday outlining nearly a $38 billion request to help Ukraine continue fending off Russian attacks.
The administration is also asking for $10 billion in emergency health funding, with more than $9 billion going toward Covid vaccine access, next-generation Covid vaccines, long Covid research and more. About $750 million would be spent on efforts to control the spread of monkeypox, hepatitis C and HIV.
Congress has so far provided about $66 billion for Ukraine and other war-related needs. The administration argues that about three-quarters of that funding has either been spent or is committed to specific purposes.
An administration official said the White House plans to request additional disaster relief in the coming weeks to help with hurricane and wildfire recovery but didn’t provide any tentative figure.
The administration’s request for emergency money comes as appropriators aim to clinch a year-end government funding deal that would stave off a partial government shutdown on Dec. 16 and increase agency budgets for the current fiscal year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already promised to provide more money for Ukraine in a government funding package, while some conservatives are arguing that the U.S. should cut off financial assistance and assess how funding for the country has been spent to date. (read more)
The National Electoral Institute (INE) that organizes Mexico’s elections is in jeopardy. AMLO accused the INE of fraud back in 2006 and 2012 during his failed elections. He would now like to reduce Congress from 500 to 300 people and slash the Senate from 128 to 96. People are accusing Lopez Obrador of attempting to turn Mexico into a socialistic state like Cuba or Venezuela.
This is the same president who is backed by Mexico’s dangerous cartels. He visited “El Chapo’s” mother for her birthday and publicly greeted her. A politician would not enter Sinaloa territory without protection.
The opposition party would need to support AMLO’s measure for it to pass into law. People were warned that this man would never relinquish power after he was elected in 2018. Yet, the Western media praised him as the Mexican Bernie Sanders who was a simple man of the people. The proud Mexican people do not want to lose their freedom. They are standing up for their country and demanding reform.
This FTX scandal is the death nil for cryptos. At first, I assumed that perhaps they lost a ton of money because of the implosion of the bond market. But this was not the case. In fact, this is perhaps the worst I have ever seen and it comes from trading losses from kids that had no experience whatsoever with regard to trading. They obviously did not even understand fiduciary responsibility. MF Global was taking client money to trade in London and got the market wrong. Bernie Madoff remains a mystery wrapped up in a political enigma. From 1991 to 2008, Bernie and Ruth Madoff contributed only about $240,000 to federal candidates, parties, and committees. Madoff was not trying to buy influence as was taking place at FTX. Maxwell mysteriously died in 1991 when his trading scandal surfaced, but he was also secretly backing the communist coup against Gorbachev in 1991.
Then there were the accounting scandals of ENRON and Worldcom whereby to hide their losses and failures, they engaged in accounting fraud to cover up the true story. But there were not using other people’s money to trade, they were hiding their bad performance from shareholders hoping to make a comeback.
That is the common denominator. I have been called into many crises. The one thing that always runs through the problem is the refusal to admit a mistake. That seems to lead to losing trades continuing to be held in hope of the infamous COMEBACK. The motive seems to be the same and many of the problems I have been called into to help solve have been in corporations where some strategy went wrong. In these cases of ENRON, Worldcom that were allowed to fester. The trading scandals are perpetuated in the hope that the next trade will win it all back.
Crypto contagion instigated by FTX, has only gotten more interesting since Sam Bankman-Fried sent a series of cryptic tweets spelling out the words “What HAPPENED” after his wealth wipeout. After the collapse of FTX, we are looking at a collapse in confidence in all digital assets.
With this degree of collapse in even Bitcoin, there will be more bankruptcies lining up. Inexperience dominates this young field and facing a stiff recession ahead going into 2023, this meltdown is not over yet. The low in Bitcoin from 2021 high is not likely before 2023. Thus – as they say – it ain’t over until the fat lady sings (a reference to Opera).
I reported in September that the Heritage Foundation estimated that the average American lost $4,200 since Biden became president. Within only a month, their analysis for October revealed that the average family had lost an average of $7,400. Around $6,100 of the loss came from annual income, while interest rates cost the average American $1,300 annually. For the analysis to nearly double in the course of a month is alarming, and it is reasonable to suspect that losses will become steeper due to current policies.
The Heritage Foundation said this estimate, obviously, does not “fully reflect the pain experienced by families.” They did not factor in losses from retirement accounts or investments. They certainly did not count the number who lost their careers due to pandemic mandates. Nor did they factor in the increased cost of borrowing money, mortgages, or the doomed bond market. They also did not factor in that he caused the public to lose all confidence in the government.
All gains under the Trump era were erased in less than two years. The changes that a new administration can implement are astronomical. The spending packages pushed forth acted as a temporary band-aid over a wound that will never heal. At least the generally uninformed public believed those packages would help, but that tide is turning as they can no longer offer unlimited free handouts. The economy was brought to a screeching halt in 2020, and absolutely nothing has been done by Washington to improve conditions since then. The spending packages lack all common sense and seem to be a deliberate attempt to hurt the country.
Anyone who wants to pay more for everything – go ahead. Those of us who voted for sensible politicians with real plans will send you the bill.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance
Katie Hobbs, the valley girl uptalker who refused to debate, has been declared the winner of the Arizona Governor race against candidate Kari Lake.
I’m not going to try and impart some great wisdom over this, I am likely more disappointed than most, other than to point out the brutally and painfully obvious. Any electioneering process that takes six days to determine the winner and permits weeks of ballot collection within the construct, is no longer an election based on votes.
I’m not sure what to call these multi-week ballot collection contests, but they do not resemble any election that I can reference in any other western nation. Kari Lake was clearly the superior candidate, and Katie Hobbs is genuinely -no snark- a doofus. However, in this new ballot collection electioneering process, you can make the argument that candidate quality is essentially irrelevant.
Here’s my question. We know from the ground reporting and flawed election systems that thousands of ballots were moved into adjudication because they could not be tabulated by broken machinery and flawed election technology infrastructure. Simple question: Of the ballots that were moved into the “adjudication process”, what percentage of those ballots were for Kari Lake and what percentage were for Katie Hobbs? Start there.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance
The Senate Leadership Fund is the Political Action Committee (PAC) controlled by Mitch McConnell. Within the quarterly FEC filings of the Senate Leadership Fund, we discover that in addition to funding Joe Biden and Democrats, the ponzi scheme known as the FTX cryptocurrency exchange was also funding Mitch McConnell with $2.5 million. [Document Source]
There is a lot of speculation about U.S. taxpayer funds going to Ukraine, then transferring into the FTX crypto exchange program, then exiting back out with FTX donations to the DC politicians who provided the Ukraine funds. If this ends up being accurate, then the FTX crypto currency operation was being used as a laundry system to funnel money from congress through Ukraine and back into the pockets of politicians.
Do not look for DC politicians to investigate or expose themselves in this potential laundry operation.
Most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a House or Senate representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past. There is not a single person in congress writing legislation or laws.
In modern politics not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen.
Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Understand this dynamic and you understand how politicians become multi-millionaires on much lesser salaries; and why ‘We The People’ are insignificant and annoying gnats to their business model. Here’s how it works right now.
Outside groups, often called “special interest groups”, are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs. These groups are often representing foreign governments, Wall Street multinational corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their affiliation.
Sometimes the groups are social interest groups, activists, climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.
The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their ‘business‘ is getting legislation for their unique interests.
These groups are filled with highly paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs.
In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress. Within the walls of these buildings within Washington DC is where the ‘sausage’ is actually made.
Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process.
Almost all legislation created is not ‘high profile’, they are obscure changes to current laws, regulations or policies that no-one pays attention to. The passage of the general bills within legislation is not covered in media. Ninety-nine percent of legislative activity happens without anyone outside the system even paying any attention to it.
Once the corporation or representative organizational entity has written the law they want to see passed – they hand it off to the lobbyists.
The lobbyists are people who have deep contacts within the political bodies of the legislative branch, usually former House/Senate staff or former House/Senate politicians themselves.
The lobbyist takes the written brief, the legislative construct, and it’s their job to go to congress and sell it.
“Selling it” means finding politicians who will accept the brief, sponsor their bill and eventually get it to a vote and passage. The lobbyist does this by visiting the politician in their office, or, most currently familiar, by inviting the politician to an event they are hosting. The event is called a junket when it involves travel.
Often the lobbying “event” might be a weekend trip to a ski resort, or a “conference” that takes place at a resort. The actual sales pitch for the bill is usually not too long and the majority of the time is just like a mini vacation etc.
The size of the indulgence within the event, the amount of money the lobbyist is spending, is customarily related to the scale of benefit within the bill the sponsoring business entity is pushing. If the sponsoring business or interest group can gain a lot of financial benefit from the legislation, they spend a lot on the indulgences.
Recap: Corporations (special interest group) write the legislation. Lobbyists take the law and go find politician(s) to support it. Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc. Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.
Within every step of the process there are expense account lunches, dinners, trips, venue tickets and a host of other customary financial waypoints to generate/leverage a successful outcome. The amount of money spent is proportional to the benefit derived from the outcome.
The important part to remember is that the origination of the entire process is EXTERNAL to congress.
Congress does not write laws or legislation; special interest groups do. Lobbyists are paid, some very well paid, to get politicians to go along with the need of the legislative group.
When you are voting for a Congressional Rep or a U.S. Senator you are not voting for a person who will write laws. Your rep only votes on legislation to approve or disapprove of constructs that are written by outside groups and sold to them through lobbyists who work for those outside groups.
While all of this is happening the same outside groups who write the laws are providing money for the campaigns of the politicians, they need to pass them. This construct sets up the quid-pro-quo of influence, although much of it is fraught with plausible deniability.
This is the way legislation is created.
If your frame of reference is not established in this basic understanding you can often fall into the trap of viewing a politician, or political vote, through a false prism. The modern origin of all legislative constructs is not within congress.
“we’ll have to pass the bill to, well, find out what is in the bill” etc. ~ Nancy Pelosi 2009
“We rely upon the stupidity of the American voter” ~ Johnathan Gruber 2011, 2012.
Once you understand this process you can understand how politicians get rich.
When a House or Senate member becomes educated on the intent of the legislation, they have attended the sales pitch; and when they find out the likelihood of support for that legislation; they can then position their own (or their families) financial interests to benefit from the consequence of passage. It is a process similar to insider trading on Wall Street, except the trading is based on knowing who will benefit from a legislative passage.
The legislative construct passes from K-Street into the halls of congress through congressional committees. The law originates from the committee to the full House or Senate. Committee seats which vote on these bills are therefore more valuable to the lobbyists. Chairs of these committees are exponentially more valuable.
Now, think about this reality against the backdrop of the 2016 Presidential Election. Legislation is passed based on ideology. In the aftermath of the 2016 election the system within DC was not structurally set-up to receive a Donald Trump presidency.
If Hillary Clinton had won the election, her oval Office desk would be filled with legislation passed by congress which she would have been signing. Heck, she’d have writer’s cramp from all of the special interest legislation, driven by special interest groups that supported her campaign, that would be flowing to her desk.
Why?
Simply because the authors of the legislation, the originating special interest and lobbying groups, were spending millions to fund her campaign. Hillary Clinton would be signing K-Street constructed special interest legislation to repay all of those donors/investors.
Congress would be fast-tracking the passage because the same interest groups also fund the members of congress.
President Donald Trump winning the2016 election threw a monkey wrench into the entire DC system…. In early 2017 the modern legislative machine was frozen in place.
The “America First” policies represented by candidate Donald Trump were not within the legislative constructs coming from the K-Street authors of the legislation. There were no MAGA lobbyists waiting on Trump ideology to advance legislation based on America First objectives.
As a result of an empty feeder system, in early 2017 congress had no bills to advance because all of the myriad of bills and briefs written were not in line with President Trump policy. There was simply no entity within DC writing legislation that was in-line with President Trump’s America-First’ economic and foreign policy agenda.
Exactly the opposite was true. All of the DC legislative briefs and constructs were/are antithetical to Trump policy. There were hundreds of file boxes filled with thousands of legislative constructs that became worthless when Donald Trump won the election.
Those legislative constructs (briefs) representing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of time and influence were just sitting there piled up in boxes under desks and in closets amid K-Street and the congressional offices. Legislation needed to be in-line with an entire new political perspective, and there was no-one, no special interest or lobbying group, currently occupying DC office space with any interest in synergy with Trump policy.
Think about the larger ramifications within that truism. That is also why there was/is so much opposition.
No legislation provided by outside interests means no work for lobbyists who sell it. No work means no money. No money means no expense accounts. No expenses mean politicians paying for their own indulgences etc.
Politicians were not happy without their indulgences, but the issue was actually bigger. No K-Street expenditures also means no personal benefit; and no opportunity to advance financial benefit from the insider trading system.
Without the ability to position personal wealth for benefit, why would a politician stay in office? The income of many long-term politicians on both Republican and Democrat sides of the aisle was completely disrupted by President Trump winning the election. That is one of the key reasons why so many politicians retired immediately thereafter.
When we understand the business of DC, we understand the difference between legislation with a traditional purpose and modern legislation with a financial and political agenda.
Additionally, while looking for the FTX donations, it’s worth noting that Citadel Investment CEO Ken Griffin also gave Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, $20 million in 2022. This is the same Ken Griffin that is a major donor funding the Ron DeSantis 2024 effort. (SOURCE)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance
When we are intellectually honest with each other, we accept the traditional Republican apparatus has always been in favor of Wall Street interests, multinational corporations, multination trade agreements, offshoring jobs, overseas manufacturing, open borders to provide endless supplies of unskilled service workers to fulfill their affluent needs, and, in the most general sense, economically no different than the traditional Democrat apparatus. After all, both wings of the DC UniParty feed from the same trough.
The counter economic position to this multinational system has always been the America First outlook. An economic outlook that puts the U.S. worker at the heart of policy. Perhaps encapsulated by saying ‘Main Street over Wall Street’ etc.
It was also the economics of the thing that created the Bernie Bros (Bernie Sanders) and the MAGA team (Donald Trump) commonality.
As a result, the Big Club distraction and distinction game has always been played on the field of social issues. Social issues continually used as a wedge to keep the working class from recognizing their common assembly.
Skilled politicians, those tenured in the ways of the club power retention, play up the social stuff publicly, while both wings of the UniParty give a wink and a nod to each other as they pass through the halls. The “reach across the aisle” code of Omerta exists.
I have no idea how the pragmatic and angered view of President Trump, with full intent to fracture this UniParty apparatus, is going to play out. Fighting both enemies simultaneously has proven to be a massive whac-a-mole undertaking. However, that said, what is abundantly clear is the reassembly of the group trying desperately to block the populist upheaval.
The Multinational corporations are all-in within the process of this inverted Fascism. Corporations now determining the political agenda, and it’s not just here in the United States. We are seeing in in North America, Great Britain and throughout Europe. The larger “western democracy” assembly is expanding the corporate dynamic, while media run cover for the totality of modern expansion.
Specifically in the United States, we can clearly see the K-Street multinational lobbying groups trying to exploit the outcome of a midterm election they helped construct.
(Politico) The conservative Club for Growth is sending a warning shot at former President Donald Trump on the eve of his expected 2024 campaign launch — and indicating it might back his chief potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. […] provided POLITICO with a polling memo showing the former president trailing DeSantis by double digits in one-on-one matchups in Iowa and New Hampshire. (read more)
The transparency of the timing, amid an election outcome they helped create, is remarkable.
The CfG corporate folks are not good people, and CTH will battle them at every level as we have every moment in the past decade. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is not my/our enemy; however, if he aligns his political interests with the attempted refooting of the multinationals in the Republican party, then he has made a choice.
I am not going to draw a distinction between a group of multinational corporations who wants to diminish Main Street USA, and a potential ally who would align with them for political convenience. Pick up a weapon from inside the multinational armory and you become an America First enemy.
Align with The Big Club, and you are aligned with The Big Club.
Align with The Big Club, and you have chosen to align with The Big Club.
( Business Insider) – Plans for a Super PAC supporting a Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis presidential run are back on after a weak showing for former President Donald Trump’s favored candidates.
This is a reversal from just a few months ago. GOP strategist John Thomas, who is leading the soon-to-be unveiled super PAC called Ron to the Rescue, told Insider in August that DeSantis should not run for president against Trump. He’d even paused plans for the super PAC this summer after the primaries, in which Trump’s endorsed candidates did well. Trump, apparently pleased, shared the Insider interview on Truth Social.
But Thomas, founder and president of the political advertising and strategy group Thomas Partners Strategies, told Insider on Friday that the midterms have reset the calculus. Even in August, he’d said the one caveat for DeSantis pursuing a 2024 presidential run would be poor performance for Trump-favored Republicans in the midterms.
That caveat became reality on Tuesday. In addition to Trump’s weak showing, DeSantis won Florida by a historic, nearly 20-point margin that Thomas called “the perfect cascading of events politically for the governor.” Now, Thomas told Insider, his plans for the Super PAC are back on “full throttle with seven-figure gifts” and the group is ready to “get this show on the road.” (read more)
A presidential Super PAC does not exist without the approval of the candidate who it represents.
“Ron to the Rescue” does not exist without the group representing the interests contacting the people in/around Ron for approval of the creation. It’s just how the system operates. Super PAC’s cannot go out and solicit funds from supporters without gaining prior approval from the candidate network to make those contacts. It is a basic rule of fundraising, even amid the nudge, nudge – wink, wink, of Super PAC creation and plausible deniability.
If a Super PAC was fundraising for a candidate objective – and that candidate did not support the objective – the Super PAC doesn’t happen. Quite simply, this unspoken code exists so that donors do not get bilked out of their money by Super PAC’s being deceptive in their representation.
If a multinational Wall Street DeSantis 2024 Super PAC launches, it is with the support of Ron DeSantis, period.
New readers should be well aware, CTH is not going to play the pretending game.
Now that politicians have secured their positions in the elections prepare for the promises to fade. These people will say anything for our vote with no intention of following through. Biden has already announced that they will no longer accept student loan forgiveness applications. A Texas court barred future applications a day after the election – coincidence?
In fact, there is a website tracking Biden’s political promises, albeit not the most accurate. So far, he has kept only 22% of promises made during his campaign – at most. Many of these promises benefit absolutely no one, such as nominating the first black woman to the US Supreme Court, new fuel standards, increasing COVID testing, and rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO). That’s where his administration has placed their energy as if the entire world isn’t crumbling under their rule.
The website downplayed his broken promises after listing them at only 1%. He certainly broke his promise to “Build Back Better” – well… actually, he is following that plan accordingly. He has handed over America to the World Economic Forum on a silver platter. International objectives far outweigh domestic policies. The domestic policies in place and asinine spending packages have only made America less competitive and have hurt the pockets of not only the American people but the global economy.
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
Centinel2012 