Monday, December 28, 2020

"'Tis The Season For Bankruptcies, Store Closings, & Tent Cities..."

"'Tis The Season For Bankruptcies, Store Closings, & Tent Cities..."
by Michael Snyder

"We need to make 2021 a year of hope, because right now there is more economic suffering in America than we have seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. More than 100,000 businesses have permanently closed down since the pandemic began, many of our most iconic chains have filed for bankruptcy over the past 12 months, and tent cities are popping up in major cities all across the country. Coming into this year, the suicide rate in the U.S. was already at an all-time record high, and a Gallup survey recently discovered that the mental health of Americans is at an all-time low. If we can’t find a way to give people hope, multitudes of Americans will decide that life is no longer worth living just like Anthony Quinn Warner did. The explosion in Nashville should be a wake up call for all of us, because there are countless others out there that are feeling the hopelessness that Warner did.

In 2020, we saw retail stores close their doors at a pace that we have never seen before. According to the New York Post, NYC lost more than 1,000 chain stores all by itself: "The Big Apple saw almost one in seven nationally recognized chain-store branches close their doors as the pandemic sent consumers scurrying for cover, according to a new report. A record high 1,057 chain stores - including 70 Duane Reades, 49 Starbucks and 22 Papyruses - have waved the white flag over the past 12 months, according to the Center for an Urban Future’s annual “State of the Chains” report, set to be ­released Wednesday."

If you go back to 2018, 0.3 percent of all chain stores in the city shut down permanently. This year, that figure has skyrocketed to 13.3 percent: "The 13.3 percent decline shatters all previous records reported by the nonprofit agency since it began tracking the data 13 years ago. Last year, just 3.7 percent of all chain outlets closed, up from 0.3 percent in 2018." Of course the same thing is happening all over the nation. Empty retail buildings now litter the landscape, and it is only going to get worse.

But it is hard to imagine that the next 12 months could actually be worse than the past 12 months. In an article published earlier this month, CNN listed 30 major chains that have filed for bankruptcy in 2020:

• Papyrus
• Bar Louie
• Krystal
• Pier 1 Imports
• Modell’s Sporting Goods
• True Religion
• J.Crew Group
• Neiman Marcus
• JCPenney
• Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes
• Tuesday Morning
• GNC
• CEC Entertainment
• NPC International
• Brooks Brothers
• Sur La Table
• Muji USA
• Lucky Brand
• RTW Retailwinds
• Ascena Retail Group
• California Pizza Kitchen
• Lord & Taylor
• Tailored Brands
• Stein Mart
• Century 21 (department store chain)
• Sizzler USA
• Ruby Tuesday
• Friendly’s
• Guitar Center
• Francesca’s

Sadly, now that the holiday season is done there will inevitably be another huge wave of store closings and bankruptcies. Of course the new lockdowns are certainly not helping matters at all. Millions upon millions of people are staying home and not spending money, and this is hitting the restaurant business particularly hard.

In fact, the National Restaurant Association is warning “that 40% to 50% of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead” if something is not done: "The National Restaurant Association said that 40% to 50% of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead if they don’t reopen immediately. Two of the U.S.’s most iconic restaurants, the 21 Club in Manhattan and the Cliff House in San Francisco, announced they had closed their doors permanently after nearly 100 years of business. As they die, so do hundreds of jobs in these cities. The workers out of work aren’t rich. Overall, 15 million middle-income people work for bars and restaurants."

I can definitely understand why so many restaurant owners are absolutely furious right now. You can watch one restaurant owner give an impassioned speech in which he boldly declares that “I’m not ready to give my country up to these people” right here. I have to admit, I got pretty fired up watching that one.

Unfortunately, the control freak politicians have shown that they are willing to take draconian measures in order to implement their ridiculous lockdowns. For example, just recently heavily armed police heartlessly raided a hair salon that refused to comply with the COVID lockdown in California. If I was that salon owner, I would move out of California and never look back.

What is ironic is that many of the politicians that are supposed to be the most “liberal” are the ones that are actually hurting those at the bottom of the economic food chain the most: "Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now? Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, “The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color.”

As economic conditions continues to unravel, more Americans are falling out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day, and we continue to see more evidence of this all around the nation. In Chicago, it was being reported that people were lined up for 15 blocks to receive food and toys at a holiday giveaway: "A Chicago actress and her foundation brought 3,000 toys, food, and countless smiles to the West Garfield Park neighborhood for the holidays Wednesday. As CBS 2’s Marissa Parra reported, people waited for more than two hours in their cars for the giveaway, and there were lines that stretched over 15 blocks – dramatically underscoring the need."

Can you imagine waiting in a line that is 15 blocks long? The bread lines during the Great Depression were long, but I don’t think they were that long.

Homelessness is also growing at a very frightening rate, and this is fueling the rise of tent cities from coast to coast: "Tent cities are expanding across the United States as experts warn that the ongoing pandemic could lead to a ‘catastrophic’ homeless crisis where hundreds of thousands more Americans are living on the streets.

In Phoenix, authorities have converted two enormous parking lots into tent cities for the homeless, but even the homeless are being required to follow social distancing protocols: "To deal with an exploding homeless population and encourage social distancing during the pandemic, Maricopa County officials turned this pair of asphalt-topped parking lots into the area’s newest homeless shelter. The county has more than 7,500 people on the streets, and nearly 5,000 dead from COVID-19. Inside the crowded encampment, ringed by security fencing and barbed wire, each family has been allotted a 12-by-12-foot lot, marked by paint, to separate people as much as possible."

This is the cold, hard reality that multitudes of people are living at this point. Dependence on the government and unquestioning submission to authorities have become a way of life for countless numbers of Americans, and economic conditions are not going to be getting better for the foreseeable future.

This is why we must give people hope in 2021 and beyond, because the amount of economic pain that we are witnessing around the country is already off the charts. The government may be able to send checks to people, but it cannot give them hope. And when people have lost all hope and have become extremely desperate, they can end up doing very foolish things just like Anthony Quinn Warner did."
Stipendium peccati mors est...

"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."
- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert: Updates Plus! President Trump Signs Covid Bill, Expect NEW Record Highs For Stocks"

Gregory Mannarino,
"Alert: Updates Plus! President Trump Signs Covid Bill, 
Expect NEW Record Highs For Stocks"

The Poet: May Sarton, “Now I Become Myself”

“Now I Become Myself”

“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before —”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move,
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!”

~ May Sarton,
 Collected Poems, 1930-1993

"The Object Of Life..."

"We May Know..."

“We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbor who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.”
- Fernando Pessoa

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/28/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/28/20"

DECEMBER 28, 2020 AT 3:00 AM: "It's Long Past Time For CDC To Clean-Up The COVID-19 Death Counts" "Washington’s data was riddled with cases - as much as 13 percent of the total - in which the death certificate made no reference to COVID-19 as a cause of death. In several cases, even gunshot deaths were chalked up to the virus..."
 Dec. 28, 2020 12:07 AM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 80,784,400 
people, according to official counts, including 19,175,748 Americans.
At least 1,764,300 have died.

"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
https://covidtracking.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/28/20"

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/28/20"
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

"How It Really Is"

Oh no it won't. 
And if you thought 2020 was fun you're just gonna love 2021...

"Improve Your Focus! Music for Concentration, Studying and Work"

Greenred Productions,
"Improve Your Focus! Music for Concentration, Studying and Work"
"Study Music & Concentration Music is brainwave background music to help you to study, focus, and concentrate on learning process and work more effectively. Alpha Waves help your mind to get to the state of focus, which is perfect for studying or preparing for exam or test you have at school or university. It also maintains your alertness while studying. Beta waves will help to concentrate for tasks, enhance intelligence."
Memory Music: https://youtu.be/Tv4Jg66KbJ0 Overcome Depression: https://youtu.be/1UUL0B0xKj8 Super Intelligence: https://youtu.be/nMdoCK7r_j4

"The Most Hopeful Scenario for 2021"

"The Most Hopeful Scenario for 2021"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"From the point of view of evolution, the most hopeful scenario for 2021 is the sudden and complete collapse of everything that is obsolete, inefficient, ineffective and sclerotic. When obsolete systems and entities pass away quickly, the cost and pain are processed and absorbed quickly as well: enterprises go bankrupt and their assets are liquidated, failed ventures close, and schemes that didn't yield the desired benefits are scrapped. This is the evolutionary process. Whatever has lost its selective advantages will succumb to selective pressures and fade away.

The problem arises when self-serving insiders siphon resources to keep their obsolete, inefficient, ineffective and sclerotic gravy-train protected from selective pressures. Keeping a terminally ill human alive is an analogy: it's possible to extend the life of a terminally ill person at enormous expense and effort, but the patient isn't restored to their previous health or vigor - that is no longer even a possibility. They are no longer their previous self, and this is why people choose to avoid extraordinary interventions in their final phase of life.

Economically obsolete/terminal entities, on the other hand, always choose extraordinary monetary interventions to keep their gravy-train alive, even if they bleed the rest of the economy dry in the process. If the buggy-whip industry existed today, Congress would grant it billions of dollars in low-interest loans, tax breaks and direct subsidies so those who made fortunes in the buggy-whip industry would continue to prosper, not from a productive activity but from subsidies and loans that ultimately weaken the entire economy and society.

The problem here is that it's effortless and initially costless to conjure trillions of dollars out of thin air and use it to keep obsolete, inefficient, ineffective and sclerotic industries, sectors, agencies and schemes on life support. The eventual costs, consequences and risks are transferred to the entire economy, all to keep politically protected insiders and schemes well-funded even as their fundamental value proposition has collapsed.

This politically expedient "solution" - printing/borrowing trillions to stave off Natural Selection - is inevitably the first choice of corrupt, failed governments and central banks, and just as inevitably, this expedient "fix" eventually brings the entire economy to its knees.

Recall that risk cannot be made to vanish, it can only be transferred to others. By printing/borrowing trillions of dollars to prop up doomed zombies, the state and central bank (the Federal Reserve) have transferred the soaring risks of their mismanagement to the entire economy and society.

This politically expedient "solution" - saving the most inefficient and costly sectors because of the political power of insiders - is always the first choice of weak and/or corrupt leadership, for whom this is isn't just the first choice, it's the only choice. History is emphatic: over-borrowing and devaluing the currency by over-issuing "money" leads to decay and collapse. The lucky few decay into tourist destinations as the remnants of their past glory retain a nostalgic glow of artistry and power.

The unfortunate many simply decay and collapse. Thus the most hopeful scenario for 2021 is that the obsolete, inefficient, ineffective and sclerotic sectors and agencies, no matter how sacrosanct, collapse or downsize quickly. This drastically reduces the cost and pain to levels that the economy as a whole can absorb.

The worst-case scenario is our weak and/or corrupt government and central bank keep all the doomed zombies on life support, a process that bleeds the economy of adaptability, flexibility, innovation and resilience. The path of least resistance, the politically expedient path - over-borrowing and devaluing the currency by over-issuing "money" - leads to decay and collapse. There is no other possible result, no other possible outcome.

Choose wisely, America, or the options for a positive outcome will vanish like mist in Death Valley on a clear July afternoon."

Sunday, December 27, 2020

"Democrats Respond! Next Steps on $2,000 Stimulus Checks"

Meet Kevin, 
"Democrats Respond! Next Steps on $2,000 Stimulus Checks"

Must Watch! “Trillions Of Dollars Will Not Stop The Collapse; 2021 Prediction: Trouble Ahead; Banks Are Not Safe”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Trillions Of Dollars Will Not Stop The Collapse; 
2021 Prediction: Trouble Ahead; Banks Are Not Safe”

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Sea of Dreams"

2002, "Sea of Dreams"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”

“Fear Is A Viral Monster”

“Fear Is A Viral Monster”
by Donald Boudreaux

“Reading the late Hans Rosling’s 2018 book, “Factfulness”, during the summer of 2020 creates a sensation of surrealness that would have been absent had I read this volume in 2018 or 2019. On nearly every page of “Factfulness” Rosling busts the popular myth that we denizens of modernity face imminent calamities that will destroy us and the earth. Widespread fears – such as of overpopulation, of terrorism, and of the rich getting richer while the poor stagnate – are methodically revealed to be either completely unjustified or exorbitantly exaggerated.

But today, in the midst of the ongoing lockdowns and with no end in sight to the hysteria over COVID, I’ve lost all of the natural optimism that has long resided within me and that would have otherwise been fortified by Rosling’s splendid work.

Sledgehammered: The image that keeps coming into my head is of a sledgehammer. With brute force, a blunt and heavy instrument was swung down on society by the state. Sledgehammers crush. They demolish. That’s their only function. They do not build. And for as long as the dreadful weight of this particular sledgehammer – the massive mallet that is the COVID-19 lockdown – continues to press down on the rubble that it caused, there is very little opportunity for the human creativity and work effort unleashed by markets to bring about the kind of improvements that Rosling documents.

Will humanity recover? Will we – when the sledgehammer is lifted – rise, dust ourselves off, and climb back on to the happy track that we were on before March 2020? Of course it’s possible. But there’s now a novel reality that makes a renewed continuation of pre-COVID progress much less likely: the sledgehammer itself.

When this sledgehammer is lifted off of us, it won’t be lifted for long. We now know that this awful hammer is there, looming overhead. We have good reason to worry that government officials are likely to smash it down upon us when another communicable pathogen emerges and makes news – as such a pathogen inevitably will, for viral pathogens have been part of human existence from the start. How will entrepreneurship and investment be changed by this ever-present threat of a smashing sledgehammer? The creation, funding, and operation of venues in which individuals come into close physical contact with each other – either for recreation or for work – will surely be much less attractive.

More generally, the newly demonstrated willingness of state officials to destroy, with just a few executive diktats, hundreds of billions of dollars of capital value cannot but push some entrepreneurs and investors into inactivity. Why build, or build grandly, when some pompous governor or mayor – someone whose only ‘skill’ and most intense itch is to exercise power over fellow human beings – can, with a mere signature, smash down a sledgehammer and turn to mush the fruits of years of hard work and sacrifice?

And how will those in power – and those who seek power – be affected by the display by so many people of a sheepish willingness to be ordered by the state into house arrest? Did prime ministers, governors, and mayors know in mid-March just how easy it would be for them to herd millions of the rest of us away from the activities that we human beings have for generations enjoyed? Were these officials aware of their power to convince so many people under their command that each individual poses a poisonous threat to every other individual?

To prosper, we human beings must cooperate in production – Adam Smith called it the division of labor – and trade extensively. Most of these activities require face-to-face contact among individuals who see each other as partners in cooperation and exchange rather than as threatening carriers of death. And to enjoy what we produce also requires face-to-face contact, for we are a social species.

In possession of dictatorial power unknown just a few months ago, government officials – a group undeserving of much trust even in the best of times – will not shy away from wielding their newly discovered powers. The results will be ugly.

Attentive to Fear: Ironically, in his upbeat book Hans Rosling himself unintentionally offers justification for my pessimism. He does so in a chapter titled “The Fear Instinct.” Here’s a key passage: “When we are afraid, we do not see clearly… Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear. This undeniable reality means that a people in fear are a people who are unlikely to assess with much rationality the pros and cons of government policies. And the greater the fear, the less able people are to detect and resist government overreach.

Who is so naïve as to deny that this reality gives to government officials strong incentives to stir up fear? People who seek positions of political power generally are people who, by this very seeking, reveal that they are especially keen on exercising power over fellow human beings. And so if more power for the state grows out of more fear in the people, state officials have every incentive to exaggerate real dangers and to concoct fake ones.

The result is a vicious cycle. The possession of power includes a disproportionately great ability to stir up fear, and stirred-up fear creates more power.”

Further, Rosling’s insights about the media imply that they contribute to this vicious cycle. Here again is Rosling: “We have a shield, or attention filter, between the world and our brain. This attention filter protects us against the noise of the world: without it, we would constantly be bombarded with so much information we would be overloaded and paralyzed. Most information doesn’t get through, but the holes [in our attention filter] do allow through information that appeals to our dramatic instincts. So we end up paying attention to information that fits our dramatic instincts, and ignoring information that does not.

The media can’t waste time on stories that won’t pass our attention filters. Here are a couple of headlines that won’t get past a newspaper editor, because they are unlikely to get past our own filters: “MALARIA CONTINUES TO GRADUALLY DECLINE.” “METEOROLOGISTS CORRECTLY PREDICTED YESTERDAY THAT THERE WOULD BE MILD WEATHER IN LONDON TODAY.” Here are some topics that easily get through our filters: earthquakes, war, refugees, disease, fire, floods, shark attacks, terror attacks. The unusual events are more newsworthy than everyday ones.”

An invisible virus is the perfect troublemaker to portray as an existential monster. Like an evil spirit, it can live, usually silently, within the breast of each of us. And so if a large enough number of us can be convinced that an unseen, vile monster lurks in everyone else, the resulting widespread fear empowers government officials to do what government officials do best – and what they’ve done so horribly over the past 11 months: destroy.”

“Face The Facts”

“Face The Facts”

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” 
– Attributed to Sir Winston Churchill

"It's for Mike Pence to Judge Whether a Presidential Election Was Held at All"

"It's for Mike Pence to Judge Whether a 
Presidential Election Was Held at All"
by Ted Noel

"On January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President Pence presiding as president of the Senate. His power will be plenary and unappealable. You heard that right. As president of the Senate, every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection “out of order” or “denied.” His task will be to fulfill his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed. This is a high standard of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices. He can roll over on “certified” electors, or he can uphold the law.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures “plenary authority” as enunciated in Bush v. Gore. This is key, since the counting of votes is discussed in Article II, the 12th Amendment, and 3 USC 15. To this we must add the history of counting and objections recounted by Alexander Macris (here and here). Put bluntly, it’s as clear as mud. Add to that the fact that the contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have sent dueling slates of electors to D.C. This means that the V.P. has to decide how he will handle the situation when two sealed envelopes are handed to him from any of those states.

Macris points out that in 1800, even with constitutional deficiencies in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson blithely counted defective electoral votes from Georgia, effectively voting himself into the presidency. This demonstrates that the president of the Senate is the final authority on any motions or objections during the vote-counting. There is no appeal. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any outrage. Whatever Pence does, people will be angry. But what does the law demand?

Seven contested states clearly violated their own laws. Rather than list the facts, which have been detailed in multiple articles, we must consider the following. An election is a process of counting votes for candidates. Only valid, lawful votes may be counted. A valid lawful vote is:

• Cast by an eligible, properly registered elector as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
• Cast in a timely manner, as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
• Cast in a proper form as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.

Any process that does not follow these rules is not an election. Anything that proceeds from it cannot be regarded as having any lawful import.

Most commentators suggest that a process of collecting pieces of paper with marks on them is an election regardless of errors, omissions, and even deliberate malfeasance. This is a mistake. Imagine a golf tournament where every bad shot by one player gets a do-over, but the competing player has to follow USGA rules in detail. One player gets to drop freely out of hazards, but the other has to tackle every embedded ball as it lies. The result is a travesty.

The same thing applies to elections. If there are a handful of improper votes, we can suggest that there was in fact an election, perhaps tainted, but the election wasn’t materially harmed. But when the people charged with managing the election decide to ignore the law, whatever process they supervise is not the process defined by the law. Therefore, it is not an election.

This leaves V.P. Pence with a dilemma. He is a gentleman who regards our governmental traditions with a degree of reverence, so he will be reluctant to take any bold action. But as an honorable man, faced with massive illegality, he must act to protect the law. Consider how things might go down as the two closed envelopes from Georgia are handed to the V.P. Rather than opening them, he says:

"In my hand are envelopes purporting to contain electoral votes from Georgia. They are competing for consideration, so it is essential that I consider the law that governs this. That law, according to the Legislature of Georgia and Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution is the Georgia statute that includes procedures for signature-matching on absentee ballots, a requirement that all absentee ballots be first requested by a legitimate voter, and that election monitors be meaningfully present at all times while votes were counted.

The Georgia secretary of state, who is not empowered by the U.S. Constitution to make changes to election law, entered into a Consent Decree that gutted these protections enacted by the Georgia Legislature. The processes that he prescribed and were ultimately followed were manifestly contrary to that law. Further, the State of Georgia, in unprecedented concert with other states, suspended counting of ballots in the middle of the night, covering its conspiracy with a false claim of a “water main break.” We now know from surveillance video that many thousands of “ballots” were counted unlawfully in the absence of legally required observers.

Finally, the State of Georgia, under the authority of secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a non-legislative actor, used fatally flawed Dominion voting machines that have been demonstrated to be unreliable. In testing, the error rate of Dominion machines has exceeded 60%, far in excess of legal limits. They are designed to facilitate fraud without creating the legally required paper trail. This alone is far more than enough to swing an election.

Since the state of Georgia has failed to follow the election law established by its legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, it has not conducted a presidential election. Therefore, no “presidential electors” were appointed in Georgia. Further, “electors” “certified” by non-legislative actors pursuant to this process are in fact not ”presidential electors.” The competing slate of “electors” is similarly deficient, having not been elected through a presidential election.

Therefore, the chair rules that Georgia has not transmitted the votes of any presidential electors to this body. Georgia presents zero votes for Donald Trump and zero votes for Joseph Biden."


The statement says nothing about who might or might not have “won” the contested states. Rather, by not following their own laws, as enacted by their own legislatures, they have violated Article II, Section 1. Thus, they have not conducted an election, and their results are void.

If the votes of all seven contested states are registered as zero, President Trump will have 232 votes, and Joe Biden will have 222. The 12th Amendment says, “The votes shall then be counted[.] … The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President[.]“

In plain language, Donald Trump will be re-elected, since he has a majority of the actual electoral votes. There will be no need to involve the House of Representatives to resolve a contingent election.

Richard Nixon chose not to contest the 1960 election because he felt that winning that way would lead to an ungovernable country. If V.P. Pence does this, that same argument might be made. But is the country governable even now? Blue states such as California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan are already operating in an openly lawless manner with their “emergency” “COVID-related” restrictions. Their denial of the civil rights of law-abiding citizens is horrific. Their refusal to do basic policing and law enforcement is a recipe for open war. How much worse would things be if the V.P. lived up to his oath and upheld the law?"

”The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse”

”The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse” 
by Dmitry Orlov

“Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one’s career, and so forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence.

But so far, little has been said specifically about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there is to be found continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from “a severe and prolonged recession” (the prediction we most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler’s evocative but unscientific-sounding “clusterf**k,” to the ever-popular “Collapse of Western Civilization,” painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.

For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point.

Even if society at the current stage of socioeconomic complexity will no longer be possible, and even if, as Tainter points in his “Collapse of Complex Societies,” there are circumstances in which collapse happens to be the correct adaptive response, it need not automatically cause a population crash, with the survivors disbanding into solitary, feral humans dispersed in the wilderness and subsisting miserably. Collapse can be conceived of as an orderly, organized retreat rather than a rout.

For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union – our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial collapse – did not reach the point of political disintegration of the republics that made it up, although some of them (Georgia, Moldova) did lose some territory to separatist movements. And although most of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including the military, public utilities, and public transportation, continued to function throughout. And although there was much social dislocation and suffering, society as a whole did not collapse, because most of the population did not lose access to food, housing, medicine, or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to resources. Thus situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently possible in the United States.

Having given a lot of thought to both the differences and the similarities between the two superpowers – the one that has collapsed already, and the one that is collapsing as I write this – I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define five stages of collapse, to serve as mental milestones as we gauge our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve it.

Rather than tying each phase to a particular emotion, as in the Kübler-Ross model, the proposed taxonomy ties each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a specific level of trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift. It is something of a cultural universal that nobody (but a real fool) wants to be the last fool to believe in a lie.

Stages of Collapse:

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, "The Mountain People"). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"). There may even be some cannibalism.

Although many people imagine collapse to be a sort of elevator that goes to the sub-basement (our Stage 5) no matter which button you push, no such automatic mechanism can be discerned. Rather, driving us all to Stage 5 will require that a concerted effort be made at each of the intervening stages. That all the players seem poised to make just such an effort may give this collapse the form a classical tragedy – a conscious but inexorable march to perdition – rather than a farce (“Oops! Ah, here we are, Stage 5.” – “So, whom do we eat first?” – “Me! I am delicious!”) Let us sketch out this process.

Financial collapse, as we are are currently observing it, consists of two parts. One is that a part of the general population is forced to move, no longer able to afford the house they bought based on inflated assessments, forged income numbers, and foolish expectations of endless asset inflation. Since, technically, they should never have been allowed to buy these houses, and were only able to do so because of financial and political malfeasance, this is actually a healthy development. The second part consists of men in expensive suits tossing bundles of suddenly worthless paper up in the air, ripping out their remaining hair, and (some of us might uncharitably hope) setting themselves on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve. They, to express it in their own vernacular, “f**ked up,” and so this is also just as it should be.

The government response to this could be to offer some helpful homilies about “the wages of sin” and to open a few soup kitchens and flop houses in a variety of locations including Wall Street. The message would be: “You former debt addicts and gamblers, as you say, ‘f****d up,’ and so this will really hurt for a long time. We will never let you anywhere near big money again. Get yourselves over to the soup kitchen, and bring your own bowl, because we don’t do dishes.” This would result in a stable Stage 1 collapse – the Second Great Depression.

However, this is unlikely, because in the US the government happens to be debt addict and gambler number one. As individuals, we may have been as virtuous as we wished, but the government will have still run up exorbitant debts on our behalf. Every level of government, from local municipalities and authorities, which need the financial markets to finance their public works and public services, to the federal government, which relies on foreign investment to finance its endless wars, is addicted to public debt. They know they cannot stop borrowing, and so they will do anything they can to keep the game going for as long as possible.

About the only thing the government currently seems it fit to do is extend further credit to those in trouble, by setting interest rates at far below inflation, by accepting worthless bits of paper as collateral and by pumping money into insolvent financial institutions. This has the effect of diluting the dollar, further undermining its value, and will, in due course, lead to hyperinflation, which is bad enough in any economy, but is especially serious for one dominated by imports. As imports dry up and the associated parts of the economy shut down, we pass Stage 2: Commercial Collapse.

As businesses shut down, storefronts are boarded up and the population is left largely penniless and dependent on FEMA and charity for survival, the government may consider what to do next. It could, for example, repatriate all foreign troops and set them to work on public works projects designed to directly help the population. It could promote local economic self-sufficiency, by establishing community-supported agriculture programs, erecting renewable energy systems, and organizing and training local self-defence forces to maintain law and order. The Army Corps of Engineers could be ordered to bulldoze buildings erected on former farmland around city centers, return the land to cultivation, and to construct high-density solar-heated housing in urban centers to resettle those who are displaced. In the interim, it could reduce homelessness by imposing a steep tax on vacant residential properties and funneling the proceeds into rent subsidies for the indigent. With plenty of luck, such measures may be able to reverse the trend, eventually providing for a restoration of pre-Stage 2 conditions.

This may or may not be a good plan, but in any case it is rather unrealistic, because the United States, being so deeply in debt, will be forced to accede to the wishes of its foreign creditors, who own a lot of national assets (land, buildings, and businesses) and who would rather see a dependent American population slaving away working off their debt than a self-sufficient one, conveniently forgetting that they have mortgaged their children’s futures to pay for military fiascos, big houses, big cars, and flat-screen television sets. Thus, a much more likely scenario is that the federal government (knowing who butters their bread) will remain subservient to foreign financial interests. It will impose austerity conditions, maintain law and order through draconian means, and aid in the construction of foreign-owned factory towns and plantations. As people start to think that having a government may not be such a good idea, conditions become ripe for Stage 3.

If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is more than likely to be visible directly through one’s own living-room window, which may or may not still have glass in it. After a significant amount of bloodletting, much of the country becomes a no-go zone for the remaining authorities. Foreign creditors decide that their debts might not be repaid after all, cut their losses and depart in haste. The rest of the world decides to act as if there is no such place as The United States – because “nobody goes there any more.” So as not to lose out on the entertainment value, the foreign press still prints sporadic fables about Americans who eat their young, much as they did about Russia following the Soviet collapse. A few brave American expatriates who still come back to visit bring back amazing stories of a different kind, but everyone considers them eccentric and perhaps a little bit crazy.

Stage 3 collapse can sometimes be avoided by the timely introduction of international peacekeepers and through the efforts of international humanitarian NGOs. In the aftermath of a Stage 2 collapse, domestic authorities are highly unlikely to have either the resources or the legitimacy, or even the will, to arrest the collapse the dynamic and reconstitute themselves in a way that the population would accept.

As stage 3 collapse runs its course, the power vacuum left by the now defunct federal, state and local government is filled by a variety of new power structures. Remnants of former law enforcement and military, urban gangs, ethnic mafias, religious cults and wealthy property owners all attempt to build their little empires on the ruins of the big one, fighting each other over territory and access to resources. This is the age of Big Men: charismatic leaders, rabble-rousers, ruthless Macchiavelian princes and war lords. In the luckier places, they find it to their common advantage to pool their resources and amalgamate into some sort of legitimate local government, while in the rest their jostling for power leads to a spiral of conflict and open war.

Stage 4 collapse occurs when society becomes so disordered and impoverished that it can no longer support the Big Men, who become smaller and smaller, and eventually fade from view. Society fragments into extended families and small tribes of a dozen or so families, who find it advantageous to band together for mutual support and defense. This is the form of society that has existed over some 98.5% of humanity’s existence as a biological species, and can be said to be the bedrock of human existence. Humans can exist at this level of organization for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Most mammalian species go extinct after just a few million years, but, for all we know, Homo Sapiens still have a million or two left.

If pre-collapse society is too atomized, alienated and individualistic to form cohesive extended families and tribes, or if its physical environment becomes so disordered and impoverished that hunger and starvation become widespread, then Stage 5 collapse becomes likely. At this stage, a simpler biological imperative takes over, to preserve the life of the breeding couples. Families disband, the old are abandoned to their own devices, and children are only cared for up to age 3. All social unity is destroyed, and even the couples may disband for a time, preferring to forage on their own and refusing to share food. This is the state of society described by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull in his book “The Mountain People.” If society prior to Stage 5 collapse can be said to be the historical norm for humans, Stage 5 collapse brings humanity to the verge of physical extinction.

As we can easily imagine, the default is cascaded failure: each stage of collapse can easily lead to the next, perhaps even overlapping it. In Russia, the process was arrested just past Stage 3: there was considerable trouble with ethnic mafias and even some warlordism, but government authority won out in the end. In my other writings, I go into a lot of detail in describing the exact conditions that inadvertently made Russian society relatively collapse-proof. Here, I will simply say that these ingredients are not currently present in the United States.

While attempting to arrest collapse at Stage 1 and Stage 2 would probably be a dangerous waste of energy, it is probably worth everyone’s while to dig in their heels at Stage 3, definitely at Stage 4, and it is quite simply a matter of physical survival to avoid Stage 5. In certain localities – those with high population densities, as well as those that contain dangerous nuclear and industrial installations – avoiding Stage 3 collapse is rather important, to the point of inviting foreign troops and governments in to maintain order and avoid disasters. Other localities may be able to prosper indefinitely at Stage 3, and even the most impoverished environments may be able to support a sparse population subsisting indefinitely at Stage 4.

Although it is possible to prepare directly for surviving Stage 5, this seems like an altogether demoralizing thing to attempt. Preparing to survive Stages 3 and 4 may seem somewhat more reasonable, while explicitly aiming for Stage 3 may be reasonable if you plan to become one of the Big Men. Be that as it may, I must leave such preparations as an exercise for the reader. My hope is that these definitions of specific stages of collapse will enable a more specific and fruitful discussion than the one currently dominated by such vague and ultimately nonsensical terms as “the collapse of Western civilization.”
Freely download “Collapse of Complex Societies”, by Joseph A. Tainter, here: