If they didn't there'd already be a pitchfork parade outside the US House.

After Obamacare passed and the GOP subsequently took control of the chamber it voted more than fifty times to repeal the law.  During all of those times the Senate and/or White House was under Democrat control -- specifically, Obama in the latter case.  They knew damn well they had neither the votes to override his inevitable veto and the bill would likely never reach his desk in the first place.

Then Trump showed up.  On January 12th, 2017, with a House, Senate and GOP President the bill was voted down.  Three times in the Senate votes failed, with a Republican President (who would have signed it, of course.)

You can blame whatever you'd like for that, but the facts are that the GOP has never actually meant it otherwise it would not have taken 50 knowing-will-fail votes, all of which did nothing but give them something to solicit you for money upon.  When the tables were turned and in fact the GOP held both majorities and the Presidency the fact that they had solicited said money under false pretense was laid bare on the table.

Now we are back with the same claims that the GOP is going to "save America."

Don't get me wrong; I like the House rule changes, such as they are.  But exactly none of them are going to turn into the sort of thing that the House can actually do, irrespective of what the Senate or White House wants.  You see, if the House really means it when it comes to a specific legislative thing it has the absolute power to force it to be enacted.  This is the design of the US House and intended by the Founders.

How?

It's quite simply really: All spending power comes from the House.

Now, we are starting to see exactly what those warning voices were talking about.

An interesting article in ZeroHedge Saturday [SEE HERE] draws attention to how the media can no longer try to ignore the created global food crisis.

ZeroHedge – People on the other side of the planet are dropping dead from starvation right now, but most people don’t even realize that this is happening.  Unfortunately, most people just assume that everything is fine and dandy.  If you are one of those people that believe that everything is just wonderful, I would encourage you to pay close attention to the details that I am about to share with you.  Global hunger is rapidly spreading, and that is because global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter. 

If current trends continue, we could potentially be facing a nightmare scenario before this calendar year is over. (read more)

The article then goes on to detail the issues and food shortages in Pakistan, India and the entire African continent.  Factually, according to media reports on the region, the worst food crisis in history is happening – yet most U.S. and European Union media are avoiding it.  The famine is happening in almost complete western silence.

Keep in mind, none of this is unexpected.  In fact, the G7 countries discussed the pending problem in mid 2022, yet no one took any steps to avoid it.

You do not need to be a farmer to understand that nitrogen/phosphorus-based industrial fertilizer has been the reason why farm yields have generated massive amounts of food on a global basis.  The United States, Canada, the U.K. and places like the Netherlands have massively increased their ability to generate food for export, in large part due to the success of improved fertilizer and crop saving modern pesticides.  Take those farming advancements away under the guise of climate change and you get Sri Lanka, Pakistan and now the African Continent.

Those western climate and energy policies create downstream consequences.  The decision to chase a new global energy policy under the name “Build Back Better,” in combination with short-sighted EU sanctions against Russia, and you get food shortages.

It was not Vladimir Putin who told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz their proactive recommendation to switch from crop-based biofuels to human food would be blocked.  That G7 decision was made by Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden. {link} Even more significantly, it was not Russia who threatened the multinational energy companies about investing in Africa for expanded natural gas supplies for their fertilizer needs. That threat came from the same western government alliance, per their instructions from the World Economic Forum group {link}.

It was predictable {JUNE 21st} {June 30th} and {July 6th} that western government leaders would seek to avoid responsibility for the food crisis they created, and throughout the latter part of 2022 we saw western media trying, desperately, to frame Russia for global food shortages in order to protect western politicians.

I said this in July of last year and as the consequences now surface it is even more critical to understand.

Joe Biden, NATO, the G7, the European Union, the World Bank, USAID, and every western leader in the United States and Europe stated in early and mid 2022 there will be food shortages in 2023.

They did not say there might be shortages; their statements were emphatic, there will be shortages.

Accept this basic cornerstone.  Then ask why not a single proactive step has been taken by any of the aforementioned institutions or governments to alleviate what they declare is a certainty.  Why?

Simple question, “why?”

If all of the western nations, non-govt organizations and heads of state, are aware of a coming food crisis, why is there no proactive response?

It is a question that even the most hardcore leftists will not answer, because there is only one answer.  No action is being taken because they do not want to take action.  No effort to avoid the crisis is being done, because they do not want the crisis avoided.

Peel all the layers of obfuscation and causation away, and what we find is the epicenter of the food shortage is directly the result of the Build Back Better agenda.  A post-pandemic western government deliberate decision to radically change global energy development.  In succinct terms, the climate change agenda.

However, regardless of how you feel about the validity of “climate change,” the cause of diminished food supplies is purposeful.  It is not climate change causing food shortages. It is the purposeful action taken under the guise of mitigating climate change that is causing the shortage of food.

The collective Build Back Better energy policy of western governments’ is the reason for massive increases in energy costs, massive oil price jumps, gasoline price increases, significant increases in chemical costs, increases in diesel fuel costs, shortages of fertilizer created using natural gas, and the end result is lower crop yields, higher farming costs and eventually, food shortages.  They knew this.

All of the organizations and government who have been decrying the future shortage of food, know it is the radical shift in energy resource development that is creating the crisis.  This acceptance of reality begins the framework to understand just how entrenched and committed these western leaders are toward their beloved climate change agenda.

We are only just now beginning to see the first aspects of the food shortage.  However, once the issue becomes unavoidable the western leaders will not and cannot accept the blame for what they have done.  They will blame-cast, excuse and justify what is surfacing.

Food shortages will be blamed on the Ukraine conflict, Russian aggression, climate change and any various iteration of justification that does not identify the true cause, their energy ideology.

I’m not so sure that people fully understand what the entire system of western government would be willing to do to avoid being blamed for avoidable death on a potential scale that is quite alarming.  All of the western leaders, institutions and governments are on the same boat.   They are all in this together.

(June 22, 2022) – (Reuters) – The European Union is divided on how to help poorer nations fight a growing food crisis and address shortages of fertilizers caused by the war in Ukraine, with some fearing a plan to invest in plants in Africa would clash with EU green goals.

The need for food “clashes with EU green goals.”…  Let that sink in.

Priorities!

We do understand how “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election: via massive fraud engineered by fraud-master Marc Elias, king of the Lawfare trolls, who fine-tuned the mail-in ballot operation during the likewise engineered Covid-19 public health ruse. That wicked election business, of course, is just another grave matter requiring the utmost protection to prevent any inquiry from ever gaining traction. And yet all of it, the monumental government crime spree of recent years is all unraveling before our eyes — even before Jim Jordan or anyone else has even said boo from a House committee chair.

It’s all falling apart — along with America’s economy, our institutions, and our culture. The Biden family’s cover stories are collapsing, the government’s censorship and propaganda machine has thrown a rod, the Covid-19 story looks day-by-day like organized mass murder, election fraud issues still stalk the land despite every effort to squash them — and the grim reality coalesces that Russia is going to clean up the mess we made in Ukraine, and, in the aftermath, probably produce a shit-ton of evidence of American corruption and villainy there.

“Joe Biden,” the phantom president, has entered the air-lock, waiting to be jettisoned into the deep space of ignominy, chocolate mint chip ice cream cone in hand. Kamala Harris watches the action offstage in a fugue of anxiety and depression. She does not want to become president — and, guess what, nobody really wants her to be, either. She won’t even have to be induced to step aside. Her hysteria will be so great that not even the hypnotists of the Intel Community will be able to calm her down. She’ll run shrieking from it back to California. The levers of control finally fail. By a caprice of history, and the genius of the founding fathers, Kevin McCarthy lands in the White House. A page turns. The coup is finally over. That’s my fantasy du jour. (source)

She sheds light on the 'dark side of Davos', telling Bild that demand for prostitutes skyrockets during the meeting. An escort service also confirmed sex workers would be very busy this week:

"Bosses book escorts in the hotel suite for themselves and their employees," a manager of an escort service told the Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten. The manager told the sex workers that their services would be in high demand for the next several days. 

Salome Balthus, a sex worker, tweeted: 

"Date in Switzerland during #WWF means looking at the gun muzzles of security guards in the hotel corridor at 2 a.m. - and then sharing the giveaway chocolates from the restaurant with them and gossiping about the rich... #Davos #WEF."

An investigation into the skyrocketing demand for sex workers at the WEF's Davos summit was revealed by The Times. Their reporting found at least 100 known prostitutes traveled to the summit in 2020.  

WEF invited about 2,500 global elites this year, and nearly 30,000 more are expected to attend dinners and wild parties at the ski resort. (read more)

Even if you’ve gotten a whole lotta stuff wrong, which I have.

That particular article, though, was nearly point-for-point correct in assessing the state of The Davos Crowd’s Great Reset project.

I wrote a Twitter thread about this the other day to pound the next few nails in Davos’ coffin before the opening of this year’s convocation of clueless globalists.

In this business the goal isn’t to get everything right but to be right more often than you’re wrong while spurring debate and conversation. This is how we crowdsource something close to the truth and/or steelman our own arguments in an endless quest for process improvement.

I wrote about that process recently and why it’s important to identify those who are still on that journey, those who are starting it, and those who are stuck in the morass of their own preconceptions.

Embrace and encourage the first two groups and question the ethics of those in the last.

Because in 2023 the mission is beginning to shift, from trying to forecast what these Cantillionaire midwits will do next to further assisting people in improving their data parsing abilities.

The more people that parse the Davos bullshit in real time, the less time they spend abreacting to it and using that saved time more productively to thwart Davos‘ plans.

So here we are as Davos 2023 winds down and it’s pretty obvious, watching the proceedings, that their entire edifice built on a crude admixture of psychopathy and hubris is tumbling down.

And it’s not only because more of us can see them for what they are, cheap communists in expensive suits, but because there are stark divisions forming within their own ranks.

The problem, however, for most of the committed Davosians is that they still live in the wine-and-cheese-filled amniotic sac of this Swiss Alps version of Oz. They don’t see the gathering storm barreling down the yellow brick road as anything more threatening than a single mosquito is to a cow.

As anyone who has lived in central Florida or studied its cattle industry knows, a few million mosquitoes can exsanguinate a cow in a matter of days.

So, watching the proceedings at this year’s Davos was fascinating because, for the first time, the sheen was gone. Too many people were seeing the walls of the echo chamber for what they were; old, shabby, and drafty rather than having the veneer of wisdom that comes with age.

Davos had come out from behind the curtain willingly to declare themselves the saviors of humanity through their Führer’s nutty ideas about transhumanism, 15-minute cities, eating bugs, and renting your life from a central authority.

And it was easy to build a counter-narrative to this insanity that permeated into the zeitgeist by just pointing your finger and laughing at them.

If you want proof of just how far the Davos idea has traveled in the five years since I first called them “The Davos Crowd” the performance of this tweet of mine from January 3rd should do it.

My average tweet gets around 5000-8000 impressions, maybe 30-40 retweets, and a couple hundred likes.

I’m really pants at Twitter.

This thing is literally the first tweet of mine in years to ‘go viral,’ and shows no signs of letting up. I’m not patting myself on the back here, but rather pointing out what something like this represents in my little corner of the internet.

Hatred of Davos has broken containment.

The anxiety and fear these men have promulgated is now deeply embedded in people because it feels closer to the truth than what they were previously presented. With a relatively free Twitter these days, the opportunity for more containment breaks like this are rising exponentially.

And that is a very good thing.

Davos likes to talk in terms of the inevitability of their forecast future. But that’s just a front. Psychopaths always double down in the face of adversity.

But I’ve noted a certain sense of panic and/or desperation from a lot of Davos’ lieutenants, like Blackrock’s Larry Fink complaining about how mean we all are opposing ESG or NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg exhorting everyone that more weapons to fund Ukraine’s war is the path to peace.

Note the use of “the” versus “a” in that sentence. When someone is telling you there is only one path forward, they are issuing an ultimatum… they are also lying through their teeth.

One of “the” paths to peace in Ukraine is in negotiating honestly with Russia. Ukrainian President and Schwab disciple Zelenskyy is out there saying nuttier things by the day, like now that he thinks Putin is dead while the US floats the idea of Ukraine retaking Crimea.

The fact that there has been not even a reasonable offer put on the table to the Russians to this point tells you that this war is policy and not an unfortunate happenstance of Russian belligerence.

But watch the video carefully and note the desperation on display from Stoltenberg. He knows the war isn’t going well for NATO. He knows that if NATO fails here he and all of this corporatist cronies personally lose their seat at the gravy train.

He also knows he will be sacrificed on the globalists’ altar if he fails to deliver in Ukraine. He’s Admiral Piett, swallowing nervously, to Soros’ Darth Vader.

Last year at Davos 2022 it was Soros delivering the rebuttal to Henry Kissinger’s call for negotiations. This Octogenarian clash of ideology and realpolitik was a kind of Rubicon crossing for all things Davos.

{And I definitely got a lot of things wrong in the article I wrote about that, if you’re keeping score.}

By ignoring Kissinger’s pragmatism and embracing Soros’ belligerence Davos revealed itself as an out-of-touch echo chamber whose edicts are hurtling the world towards a terrible conflict, making their enemies’ job opposing them that much easier.

You know Soros has won the argument within Davos because they trotted out ol’ Henry to reverse himself on negotiations and embrace war which has all the earmarks of a classic communist struggle session.

I guess that’s why Soros announced to the world he didn’t need to go to Davos this year but would be at the Munich Security Conference next month to declare WWIII.

So, where are we now?

We’re well past the point of Peak Davos that’s for sure. When the guest list for this year was leaked I found it fascinating that many who’ve skipped it in the past would be there – US bank CEOs like JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon. There were just as many who have gone previously to plead for sanity – Putin and Xi Jinping — didn’t even phone it in.

It has been a fascinating week of announcements and headlines that paint a very ugly picture for Davos’ future. When you take them (and their timing) into full context it should be obvious where this is headed.

Here’s a partial list of the headlines from this week:

• Saudis Open to Settling Trade Outside US Dollar
• New Zealand PM Ardern Announces Resignation
• Iran Joins Eurasian Economic Union
• Iran’s Oil Exports Return to Pre-Sanction Levels
• US Interested in Helping Ukraine Take Back Crimea
• ECB Head Lagarde Says Inflation is Still Too High
• Dimon Says Interest Rates Must Go Beyond 5%
• Biden-Gate Gaining Steam (here and here)
• Powell Nemesis Brainard Backs “Higher for Long Rate Policy”
• Al Gore Trotted Out to Scare Us with Climageddon!
• Morgan Stanley CEO, “Davos is an Echo Chamber”

But the clincher is this headline from The Guardian.

Most of these would be interesting at any time but that they all occurred while Davos 2023 was happening is mind-boggling. And to think that so many of the attendees there are still walking around as if the future was already written in their favor is equally mind-boggling.

I’m not about to speculate further about what’s really going on there except to say that if feels like something has fundamentally changed, likely for the better. Is Schwab on his way out after ruling the WEF for 52 years?

Is my theory that the NY Boys and others have finally had enough of the fart-sniffing eggheads correct and they showed up with a new set of rules to lay down?

Is that why Bill Gates wasn’t there?

Is that why the sycophantic Western press are running stories now that would never have seen the light of day if Schwab was still calling the shots?

Look, I’m not naïve, I know that Davos is a front for a bigger, older and deeper group of power brokers. Real bankers don’t have Wikipedia pages.

If Larry Fink is a lieutenant then Schwab is just a Colonel and it’s possible he’s being thrown under the bus now to protect the Generals.

But why do the Generals feel the need to cut bait now? As difficult as it is to believe, they may just be losing.

Sometimes things aren’t more complicated than they seem.

They took their shot and missed.

There will be no panopticon or cyber-pandemic. We’ll still drive normal cars, eat red meat, and live in homes with a modicum of privacy. Whether we avoid WWIII is a different story.

Maybe the depression we all fear is on the horizon has already been here for fifteen years and this is as bad as it gets. No mushroom clouds, no Grand Army of the Republic. Just a bunch of tired old inbred losers finally running out of runway and crashing into the ditch rather than flying off into the sunset.

They don’t believe they're done yet. It is that gulf between their perception of potency and the reality of their impotence that will determine the rest of this horror show. Soros and his neocon crazies will go to Munich and push for more war.

They just might get it. Then again they may get everything they wished for… good and hard.

Davos may be ending in 2023, but the aftereffects of their insanity will be with us for years. (read more)

Shadows are falling / And I’ve been here all day / It’s too hot to sleep / And time is running away / Feel like my soul / has turned into steel /I’ve still got the scars / That the sun didn’t heal / There’s not even room enough / To be anywhere / Lord it’s not dark yet, / but it’s getting there

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

Lights! Action! Reset!

The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Davos Freak Show

was back in business last Monday.

The mainstream media of the collective West, in unison, will be spinning non-stop, for a week, all the “news” that are fit to print to extol new declinations of The Great Reset, re-baptized The Great Narrative, but actually framed as a benign offer by “stakeholder capitalism”. These are the main planks of the shady platform of a shady NGO registered in Cologny, a tony Geneva suburb.

The list of Davos attendees was duly leaked. Proverbially, it’s an Anglo-American Exceptionalist fun fest, complete with intel honchos such as the US Director of National Intelligence, Avril “Madam Torture” Haines; the head of MI6 Richard Moore; and FBI director Christopher Wray.

Remixed Diderot and D’Alembert Encyclopedias could be written about the Davos pathology – where a hefty list of multibillionaires, heads of state and corporate darlings (owned by BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and co.) “engage” in selling Demented Dystopia packages to the unsuspecting masses.

But let’s cut to the chase and focus on a few panels – which could easily be mistaken for Straight to Hell sessions.

The Tuesday, January 17 list is particularly engaging. It features a “De-Globalization or Re-Globalization?” panel with speakers Ian Bremmer, Adam Tooze, Niall Ferguson, Péter Szijjártó and Ngaire Woods. Three Atlanticists/Exceptionalists stand out, especially the ultra-toxic Ferguson.

After “In Defense of Europe”, featuring a bunch of nullities including Poland’s Andrjez Duda, attendees will be greeted with a Special Season in Hell (sorry, Rimbaud) featuring none other than EC dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen, known by a vast majority of Germans as Ursula von der Leichen (“Ursula of Cadavers”) in a tag team with WEF mastermind, Third Reich emulator Klaus “Nosferatu” Schwab.

Rumors are that Lucifer, in his privileged underground abode, is green with envy.

There’s also “Ukraine: What Next?” with another bunch of nullities, and “War in Europe: Year 2” featuring Moldova woke chick Maia Sandu and Finnish party girl Sanna Marin.

In the War Criminal section, pride of place goes to “A Conversation with Henry Kissinger: Historical Perspectives on War”, where Dr. K. will sell all his trademark Divide and Rule permutations. Added sulphur will be provided by Thucydides strangler Graham Allison.

In his Special Address, “Liver Sausage” Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be side by side with Nosferatu, hoping he won’t be – literally – grilled.

Then, on Wednesday, January 18, comes the apotheosis: “Restoring Security and Peace” with speakers Fareed Zakaria – the US establishment’s pet brown man; NATO’s Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg; Andrzej Duda – again; and Canadian warmonger Chrystia Freeland – widely rumored to become the next NATO Secretary-General.

And it gets juicier: the coke comedian posing as warlord may join via zoom from Kiev.

The notion that this panel is entitled to emit judgments about “peace” deserves nothing less than its own Nobel Peace Prize.

How to monetize the whole world

Cynics of all persuasions may be excused for lamenting Mr. Zircon – currently on oceanic patrol encompassing the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and of course “Mare Nostrum” Mediterranean – won’t be presenting his business card at Davos.

Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult. The Great Reset does mingle merrily with NATO’s agenda as agent provocateur, financier and weaponizer of the proxy Empire vs. Russia war in black hole Ukraine. NAKO – an acronym for North Atlantic Killing Organization – would be more appropriate in this case.

As Koenig summarizes it, “NATO enters any territory where the ‘conventional’ media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.”

In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center.

The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030.

Virtually every government in the NATOstan area and the “Western Hemisphere” (US establishment definition) has been hijacked by Agenda 2030 – which translates, essentially, as hoarding, privatizing and financializing all the earth’s assets, under the pretext of “protecting” them.

Translation: the marketization and monetization of the entire natural world (see, for instance, here, here and here.)

Davos superstar shills such as insufferable bore Niall Ferguson are just well rewarded vassals: western intellectuals of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton mould that would never dare bite the hand that feeds them.

Ferguson just wrote a column on Bloomberg titled “All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front” – basically to peddle the risk of WWIII, on behalf of his masters, blaming of course “China as the arsenal of autocracy”.

Among serial high-handed inanities, this one stands out. Ferguson writes, “There are two obvious problems with US strategy (…) The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former.”

Cluelessness here is a euphemism. Ferguson clearly has no idea “algorithmic weapons” mean; if he’s referring to electronic warfare, the US may have been able to maintain superiority for a while in Ukraine, but that’s over.

Well, that’s typical Ferguson – who wrote a whole Rothschild hagiography just like his column, drinking from the Rothschild archives that appeared to have been sanitized as he knows next to nothing meaningful about their history.

Ferguson has “deduced” that Russia is weak and China is strong. Nonsense. Both are strong – and Russia is more advanced technologically than China in their advanced offensive and defensive missile development, and can beat the US in a nuclear war as Russian air space is sealed by layered defenses such as the S-400 all the way to the already tested S-500s and designed S-600s.

As far as semiconductor chips, the advantage that Taiwan has in chip manufacture is in mass production of the most advanced chips; but China and Russia can fabricate the chips necessary for military use, though not engage in mass commercial production. The US has an important advantage here commercially with Taiwan, but that’s not a military advantage.

Ferguson gives away his game when he carps about the need to “deter a nascent Axis-like combination of Russia, Iran and China from risking simultaneous conflict in three theaters: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.”

Here we have trademark Atlanticist demonization of the top three vectors of Eurasia integration mixed with a toxic cocktail of ignorance and arrogance: it’s NATO that is stoking “conflict” in Eastern Europe; and it’s the Empire that is being expelled from the “Far East” (oh, that’s so colonial) and soon from the Middle East (actually West Asia).

An AMGOT tale

Nobody with an IQ over room temperature will expect Davos to discuss any aspect of the NATO vs. Eurasia existential war seriously – not to mention propose diplomacy. So I’ll leave you with yet another typical tawdry story about how the Empire – who rules over Davos – deals in practice with its vassals.

While in Sicily earlier this year I learned that an ultra high-value Pentagon asset had landed in Rome, in haste, as part of an unscheduled visit. A few days later the reason for the visit was printed in La Repubblica, one of the papers of the toxic Agnelli clan.

That was a Mafia scam: a face-to-face “suggestion” for the Meloni government to imperatively provide Kiev, as soon as possible, with the costly anti-Samp-T missile system, developed by an European consortium, Eurosam, uniting MBDA Italy, MBDA France and Thales.

Italy possesses only 5 batteries of this system, not exactly brilliant against ballistic missiles but efficient against cruise missiles.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had already called Palazzo Chigi to announce the “offer you can’t refuse”. Apparently that was not enough, thus the hasty envoy trip. Rome will have to toe the line. Or else. After all, never forget the terminology employed by US generals to designate Sicily, and Italy as a whole: AMGOT.

American government occupied territory.

Have fun with the Davos freak show.

(Via Daily Mail) – Jacinda Ardern has choked back tears as she announced her resignation as New Zealand Prime Minister in an emotional press conference.

Her resignation comes into effect on Sunday if the Labour Party can elect her replacement, or on February 7 if the process was drawn out. ‘I am human. Politicians are human. We give all we can for as long as we can – and then it’s time. And for me, it’s time,’ she said. ‘I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice.’

Ms Ardern resigns at just 42 after becoming leader just over five years ago on October 26, 2017, and was New Zealand’s youngest-ever PM.

She insisted her party trailing in the polls the the rival National Party ahead of the upcoming election had nothing to do with her decision to step down.

‘I am not leaving because I believe we can’t win the election but because I believe we can and will,’ she said.

‘But we need a fresh set of shoulders for the challenges of both this year and the next three.’

During her resignation speech, Ms Ardern announced the next New Zealand election would be held on October 14.

The resigning PM was asked if she would take up a role with the UN after leaving office and didn’t give a straight answer.

Instead, she insisted she had ‘no plans’ other than relaxing with her baby Neve and marrying her fiancé Clark Gayford after their wedding was called off due to Covid restrictions.

‘I am looking forward to spending time with my family once again… so to Neve, mumma is looking forward to being there when you start school this year, and to Clarke, let’s finally get married,’ she said. (more)

On Tuesday, BlackRock's Larry Fink told Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos that ESG investing has been tarnished:

 "Let's be clear, the narrative is ugly, the narrative is creating this huge polarization. "

Fink continued:

"We are trying to address the misconceptions. It's hard because it's not business any more, they're doing it in a personal way. And for the first time in my professional career, attacks are now personal. They're trying to demonize the issues."

The Republican crusade, including states such as Florida, Louisiana, and Missouri, said they would pull funds out of BlackRock, citing that the asset manager's ESG efforts could impact investor returns. 

In December, Florida made the most significant withdrawal, pulling $2 billion from BlackRock. 

 "Using our cash to fund BlackRock's social-engineering project isn't something Florida ever signed up for.

 "It's got nothing to do with maximizing returns and is the opposite of what an asset manager is paid to do," Jimmy Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer, said in a recent statement.

Meanwhile, Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick has urged state officials to label BlackRock as a hostile entity for its action in the attempt to crush the oil and gas industry.  

BlackRock is "capriciously discriminating'" against fossil fuel firms, Patrick said as he called for the asset manager to be added to the list of financial firms that "boycott" fossil fuels. 

Several other states are pushing back on BlackRock.

Recall Tesla CEO Elon Musk called ESG a "scam" last year after the electric-vehicle maker was excluded from an S&P Global ESG index.

ESG is an outrageous scam!

Shame on @SPGlobal

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022

[...] However, in the interview, Fink said BlackRock took in $230 billion in 2022 from US clients, and the outflows were small, though he takes the issue "very seriously" and was trying to address the negative mood around ESG:

"We are doing everything we can to change the narrative." 

While Fink tries to save the ESG narrative, a former BlackRock senior executive, Terrence R. Keeley, recently opined in a WSJ article that after "trillions of dollars have poured into environmental, social and governance funds in recent years ... there is astonishingly little evidence of its tangible benefit." 

Perhaps what Fink's terrified about is a run on BlackRock funds because state officials and many others are realizing ESG investing is just another globalist 'scam.'

Black American men, with education rates lower than the average American, “are disproportionately employed in the low-skilled labor market, where they are more likely to be in labor competition with immigrants,” the Commission report states:

Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men. Expert economic opinions concerning the negative effects range from modest to significant. Those panelists that found modest effects overall nonetheless found significant effects in industry sectors such as meatpacking and construction. [Emphasis added]

The Commission described the impact of illegal immigration on working-class Americans as a “piece of the puzzle that must be considered by policymakers in formulating sound immigration policy,” though recent proposals by Republicans and Democrats have focused almost exclusively on benefitting foreign nationals not yet in the U.S. rather than Americans harmed by decades-long mass immigration.

As a recommendation, the Commission suggested that the Bureau of Labor Statistics collect monthly figures on the number of illegal alien workers in the U.S. and compile data on how their employment is impacting jobs and wages for low-skilled Americans.

To date, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has refused to collect and compile such data.

Peter Kirsanow, the longest-serving member of the Commission, writes in the report that “there is ample evidence to suggest that at a minimum, [illegal immigration] has had an aggravating effect on both the displacement of low-skilled American workers and the racial divide in employment.”

“This is because illegal immigration tends to increase the supply of low-skilled, low-wage labor already available in the U.S. labor market,” Kirsanow writes.

Kirsanow, mirroring the Commission’s findings, proposes that immigration legislation in Congress should start studying how mass immigration worsens “both the displacement of low-skilled American workers and the racial divide in employment.”

In years following the Commission’s report, working-class Americans have seen few remedies from Washington, DC aimed at cutting overall immigration to boost their quality of life and employment opportunities.