It’s a local Florida story and multi-faceted. However, for the bigger national audience the issue that should be considered is that Ron DeSantis and the Florida Republican party took $9+ million in campaign contributions from state energy providers, then approved the biggest electricity rate hikes in Florida history.

Additionally, and more obscure in the outcome, the Public Service Commission (Public Utility Commission, or PUC), after being filled with DeSantis appointees, informed the electricity providers they no longer needed to report the number of residents who were disconnected from utility service due to nonpayment.

One could make the intellectual and political argument, the scale of disconnection -which is quite alarming- would be averse to the interests of Governor DeSantis seeking a higher office.

Like much of the country, electricity rates in Florida have skyrocketed with the increase in natural gas prices.  However, unlike much of the country, most Florida residents have only one option for electrical utility power.  The rate of disconnection in Florida amid lower income and working families is far greater than almost any other state.  Florida is quickly becoming a class-driven society with haves and have-nots.

FLORIDA –  […] In November 2021, Florida’s Public Service Commission (PUC) issued a memorandum allowing  electric utilities to stop disclosing their shutoff data. The memorandum, which reversed the commission’s September 2020 decision to collect the data to track the pandemic’s effects on utility customers, came after DeSantis stacked the board with his appointees. The move came less than a month after commission members approved the largest electric rate hike in Florida’s history, resulting in a 20 percent increase in costs to residential ratepayers.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers testimony today before the Senate Banking and Finance Committee.  During his statements Powell says, “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.” Powell continued, “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.“… “We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting.” …  “Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.”

Everything about the testimony to the Senate, and almost everything within the questioning as presented, ignores the key and central component that inflation is being driven by energy policy.   The scale of the pretending around this issue is jaw dropping.

Western governments, including the U.S. through Joe Biden, have limited and curtailed the production and exploitation of Oil, Coal and Natural Gas.  At the core of the inflation within those same governments, this is the issue at hand.  Energy prices have skyrocketed, driving the cost of everything through the roof.  The central banks are raising interest rates in an attempt to shrink the economy to match the drop in energy production.   This is their monetary policy (interest rates) attempting to support economic policy (Green New Deal / Build Back Better).

There are no lines for consumers in the U.S and Europe of people buying durable goods, electronics or shopping for non-essential items.  Prices on the products within the durable goods economy are not being driven by excess consumer demand.  There are not 25% more people buying lemons and milk than this time last year.  The prices for goods in general, and for essential goods specifically, have risen as an outcome of the input costs around energy skyrocketing.

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As promised, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began publicizing the closed-circuit TV footage from Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.  In the introduction to the footage, Mr Carlson outlines the process and limitations that his producers encountered.

Tucker Carlson states no one from the House of Representatives placed any restrictions on the footage as reviewed. Additionally, Carlson notes that no one at Fox News leadership had any input into the review that his team undertook.  As he describes, much of the 40,000 hours of footage was innocuous, empty rooms with CCTV camera footage showing very little.  However, the footage that did show events, does not support the “violent insurrectionist” narrative as promoted by the J6 committee.  WATCH:

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Additional footage and continued segment below.

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Ugh, it makes me sick to see these schemes as they are constructed and yet feel helpless to stop them from organizing.  Remember which media outlets push the PR campaigns of the U.S. Govt.  (1) CNN drives Dept of State; (2) Washington Post drives CIA; and (3) NYT/Politico advance the interests of the domestic intelligence apparatus.

With that in mind, here comes the Intelligence Community laying the groundwork for reauthorization of the FISA-702 surveillance system on American citizens.

They are so damned transparent in their agenda, the stenographers have even dropped “FISA,” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as the term within the construct.  Now they are just calling it “702 reauthorization.”

(VIA POLITICO) – The intelligence community has a critical congressional ally in its bid to reauthorize a sweeping warrantless surveillance program. However, even he thinks its officials aren’t making a convincing enough case.

“One of the things the community’s got to do a better job of is explaining, in practical non-classified terms, how valuable this tool is,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a recent brief interview. “And they’ve not done that as well as they should.”

Warner sits at the heart of what will be a months-long, knockout debate about whether to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance program, known as Section 702, by the end-of-year deadline. The program is designed to gather the electronic communications of foreigners abroad, but has the potential to sweep up those of Americans.

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Coming out of the pandemic related disruption, the larger story of U.S. manufacturing has been an odd blend of good data and bad data depending on the sector.  While some manufacturing was growing as a result of clearing supply chains, other sectors of manufacturing remained soft.

In total, the full supply chain rebound should have completed around the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter of 2022.

However, simultaneous with the correction within the supply chain(s), consumer purchase activity began contracting.

The consumer pullback led to very weak holiday sales last year, and a combination of increased inventories of finished goods.

Keep in mind that Maersk overseas shipping noted significant drops in orders for the movement of material in the third quarter of last year.  Considering the lag, the previously noted inventory buildup in combination with the drops in unit sales of durable goods, would generally mean lower manufacturing purchase order activity Q4 (’22) and Q1 (’23).   This reality is reflected in the actual data as reported by The Wall Street Journal:

(Via WSJ) – […] New orders for manufactured goods contracted for the sixth straight month through February, according to surveys by the Institute for Supply Management. Manufacturing output is down 1.7% from its postpandemic peak in May 2022, according to a three-month moving average of Federal Reserve data. And the Commerce Department’s measure of civilian capital equipment orders, excluding aircraft—the building blocks of business—was down 3.4% in January from its recent high in November 2021, after adjusting for inflation.

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The latest YouGov poll [raw data here] shows why FL Gov Ron DeSantis is about to make the biggest political mistake of his career by launching a challenge against Donald Trump.

If you listen to the professional media pundits who give, and attempt to sway, opinion – and if you listen to the statements from the professional Republican class that wants to remove Donald Trump from the party, you will hear this general talking point:

“The Republican Party needs to appeal to a younger, more ethnically diverse audience to maximize the ‘big tent’ size of the party.”…

There are many current variations of this talking point, but generally speaking this ‘big tent new Republican Party‘ message is what you hear from the Karl Rove, Nikki Haley, Chris Sununu, Mitch McConnell, Ronna McDaniel and the entirety of the cocktail class Republican circuit.  It is a common talking point amid all the professional pundits.

However, to point out the nonsense of their argument, if we take them at their word, what we find in almost every Republican poll demographic Donald Trump’s biggest base of support is younger, less wealthy, working class voters of every ethnicity.  As outlined in the YouGov Poll cited, Donald Trump literally brings to the GOP exactly what they claim to want.  Yet these professional Republican voices use their talking point to frame a narrative against Trump.

Check out the data against the GOPe talking point.  As we have previously discussed, the younger the voter the more support for Donald Trump.  The support for Donald Trump also increases with Hispanic voters.  It is only in the very wealthy white voters where you find support increasing for Ron DeSantis; this is the exact opposite of what the professional pundits claim in print and broadcast media.

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Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced today that he will not seek the Republican nomination for 2024. [Video Here]

[Transcript] – FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: I was struggling, because my heart was telling me to run. My head was telling me, no, that just does not make sense for a whole host of reasons. And my gut was flipping back and forth. So it really came down to, if I wasn’t 100 percent convinced, then I shouldn’t do it.

ROBERT COSTA: You were torn?

FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: I was torn.

ROBERT COSTA: Toughest decision of your political career?

FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: Absolutely, toughest decision I ever made.

ROBERT COSTA: Politically, by staying out of the race, it’s a smaller field, may be tougher for Trump to get the nomination?

FORMER GOVERNOR LARRY HOGAN: I didn’t want to have a pileup of a bunch of people fighting.  Right now, you have Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention, and then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits. And the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up.

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On July 31, 2022, According to Manchin a deal between himself, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden included his support for the green energy spending bill, in exchange for two new items in future legislation: 1) Streamlined energy permitting/regulation; and 2) Increased development of Oil, Coal, Gas.  After getting his vote, Biden, Pelosi and Schumer reneged on the deal.

Today Senator Manchin inferred he wants that promise fulfilled in order to gain his support for a debt ceiling increase and a budget package. [Transcript Below]  Manchin also hedged on his own political aspirations for 2024, saying he will make a decision at the end of this year.   WATCH:

[Transcript] – SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Good morning, Brennan. Thank — Margaret, thanks for having me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to start on that derailment.

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The president last week praised bipartisan railway safety legislation that would have new rules for trains carrying hazardous materials, increased fines for safety violations, phase in newer cars.

Will you vote for it? Is that sufficient?

SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Yes, I’m going to be supporting that. We need to do it.

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On March 2, 2023, the people in control of the Joe Biden administration officially announced that government control of internet content was now officially a part of the national security apparatus. [White House Link] If you have followed the history of how the Fourth Branch of Government has been created, you will immediately recognize the intent of this new framework.

The “National Cybersecurity Strategy” aligns with, supports, and works in concert with a total U.S. surveillance system, where definitions of information are then applied to “cybersecurity” and communication vectors.  This policy is both a surveillance system and an information filtration prism where the government will decide what is information, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, then act upon it.

In part, this appears to be a response to the revelations around government influence of social media, the Twitter Files.  Now we see the formalization of the intent. The government will be the arbiter of truth and cyber security, not the communication platforms or private companies.  This announcement puts the government in control.

All of the control systems previously assembled under the guise of the Dept of Homeland Security now become part of the online, digital national security apparatus. I simply cannot emphasis enough how dangerous this is, and the unspoken motive behind it; however, to the latter, you are part of a small select group who are capable of understanding what is in this announcement without me spelling it out.

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Probably the second most anticipated speech at CPAC was the attendance by James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas who came under attack from the DeSantis aligned manipulative dirtbags within his own board of directors.  {Direct Rumble Link}

Today Mr. O’Keefe was warmly greeted by the audience at CPAC and he brought with him a brave whistleblower from the Pfizer story.  WATCH:

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