Comrade proles, thankfully artful sarcasm is still not illegal.  Tucker Carlson pulls back the curtain on a congressional performance so disconnected from the priorities of the American public, that only in Washington DC could it receive a standing ovation.  WATCH:

I am thankful for Comrade Carlson.

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FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried waived an extradition fight and U.S. Marshals flew him from the Bahamas to New York late Wednesday night.  Appearing in a Manhattan court today, the judge set bail at $250 million and permits SBF to remain under house arrest at his parent’s California home until trial begins.

Additionally, it was revealed that Carolyn Ellison, 28, the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, pleaded guilty to charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud.  Both are cooperating witnesses with the prosecution against the FTX founder.

New York – The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried can post $250 million bond and live in his parents’ home in California while he awaits trial on charges that he swindled investors and looted customer deposits on his FTX trading platform, a judge said Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Bankman-Fried, 30, “perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions.” Roos proposed strict bail terms, including a $250 million bond and house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

An important reason for allowing bail was that Bankman-Fried agreed to waive extradition, Roos said.

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The price for a dozen eggs continues climbing as explanations turn toward blaming bird flu.  However, the avian influenza may explain a recent spike, but the longer duration of escalating food price commodities is much deeper than momentary fluctuations.  These are energy dependent products.

As CTH noted last year, watch egg prices as a general gauge for overall food inflation (eggs hit almost every process in the supply chain), and watch potato availability to gauge overall row crop stability (staple commodity on every plate, venue).

Additionally, as previously noted, as energy prices continue rising pay attention to the prices on ‘organic’ products.  Rising energy prices drive up costs for large commercially processed food supplies at a much higher rate than smaller organic production.  People are starting to notice the ‘organic’ option is almost at price parity.

Wall Street Journal – […] Wholesale prices of Midwest large eggs hit a record $5.36 a dozen in December, according to the research firm Urner Barry. Retail egg prices have increased more than any other supermarket item so far this year, climbing more than 30% from January to early December compared with the same period a year earlier, and outpacing overall food and beverage prices, according to the data firm Information Resources Inc.

For supermarkets, eggs are a staple product that most consumers pick up on trips to the grocery store, similar to milk and butter. To maintain store traffic, grocers said they have been sacrificing some profits on eggs to keep prices for consumers competitive. Some suppliers are projecting potential relief in price by February or March, but cold weather could hamper production in the near term, executives said.

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It is always worth a reminder when reviewing anything from Blackrock, that the institutional investment firm has strong ties to almost every sphere of White House policy.

Today Blackrock is warning of severe economic conditions looming, the unspoken origin traces to the collective western economic shift in energy policy, aka “Build Back Better.”

As noted in the Blackrock warning, under the auspices of inflation control, central banks can try and shrink economic activity – but they are limited.  Organically, economies will free fall once the full weight of BBB energy policy accumulates.

(Business Insider) – […] A worldwide recession is just around the corner as central banks boost borrowing costs aggressively to tame inflation — and this time, it will ignite more market turbulence than ever before, according to BlackRock.

The global economy has already exited a four-decade era of stable growth and inflation to enter a period of heightened instability — and the new regime of increased unpredictability is here to stay, according to the world’s biggest asset manager.

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Federal education loan payments have been suspended ever since early 2020 when COVID was used as a justification to delay payments.  The current extension on the delay, a pre midterm bribe for young adults, runs through June 2023 and then people with the loans have to start paying again.

In the interim, Joe Biden had a plan to relieve up to $10,000 in federal student loans for low-to-middle-income borrowers and up to $20,000 for qualifying Pell Grant recipients.  However, that arbitrary Biden decree encountered multiple legal setbacks including rejection by a federal court in St. Louis and another in Texas.

Earlier today, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again rejected the Biden administration’s request to pause the Texas order vacating the $400 billion student debt relief program in a lawsuit pursued by a conservative advocacy group. {LINK}  The Texas ruling from U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman was one of two decisions that prevented the Department of Education from moving forward.

The St Louis case, also lost on appeal and based on a similar finding that Biden cannot subvert congress for this spending, has now travelled to the Supreme Court who have agreed to hear oral arguments in February but will not intervene to stop the lower court rulings.

Washington — The Supreme Court said Thursday it will take up a court fight between the Biden administration and a coalition of six Republican-led states challenging the legality of the president’s student loan forgiveness program.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the Supreme Court last month to lift an injunction from a federal appeals court that blocked implementation of the plan, but told the court that if it denied relief, it should agree to consider the merits of the case instead.

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The White House is urging Nancy Pelosi to utilize the lame duck congressional session and construct a massive omnibus spending bill that will wrap Ukraine funding, COVID spending and a federal budget extension via continuous resolution.  The request for Ukraine funding is an additional $38 billion.

Federal funds to support FEMA and hurricane recovery efforts will likely be part of the bargaining chips. Essentially, the sausage ingredients are: if congress doesn’t give Zelenskyy more money, then DeSantis will not get federal financial assistance.

If you don’t support Ukraine, you’re a Russian operative.

WASHINGTON DC – The Biden administration sent a letter to Congress on Tuesday outlining nearly a $38 billion request to help Ukraine continue fending off Russian attacks.

The administration is also asking for $10 billion in emergency health funding, with more than $9 billion going toward Covid vaccine access, next-generation Covid vaccines, long Covid research and more. About $750 million would be spent on efforts to control the spread of monkeypox, hepatitis C and HIV.

Congress has so far provided about $66 billion for Ukraine and other war-related needs. The administration argues that about three-quarters of that funding has either been spent or is committed to specific purposes.

An administration official said the White House plans to request additional disaster relief in the coming weeks to help with hurricane and wildfire recovery but didn’t provide any tentative figure.

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They have proposed and refined so many of the carbon trading schemes, it becomes difficult to remember which iteration each new formula replaces.  Heck, I’ve lost track of how many of the individual components of the larger plan are already in place.  However, John Kerry has introduced the western elites at COP27 to the latest acceptable proposal surrounding coal fired energy.

Against the backdrop of sped-up Build Back Better urgency, this coal-based carbon trading platform is called the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA).

When you stay elevated to the larger way the Energy Transition Accelerator works you can clearly see the transferring of wealth from your bank account to the global control mechanism that will eventually determine your energy allotment.  The companies that provide energy are simply the collectors for the fees you will pay to the World Economic Forum income disbursement group.

(Reuters) – […] The scheme, known as the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), was launched at the United Nations’ COP27 conference this week by John Kerry, the United States’ climate envoy, in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund.

[…] Voluntary carbon markets, in which companies get emissions credits in return for channeling cash to poor countries that cut their carbon output, have often been riddled with fraud and double-counting. Many critics think rich countries should just fork out the cash themselves to close coal plants – or tax fossil fuel companies to get the money. (read more)

There’s the system in a nutshell.  Energy providers must purchase emission credits from the ‘carbon market’ (govt); in the U.S. likely the EPA as they do with RIN credits.  The electricity provider puts the carbon purchase credit fee in your electricity bill.

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Using the outline of the previous global famine to trace a modern history of desperation and the Live Aid movement rallying of the public to feed the world, Neil Oliver contrasts the current cultural Green Agenda 40 years later and the pending energy crisis.

If millions were at risk in the 1980’s, how many are likely at risk today?  Yet the same people, institutions and systems that rallied to save the hungry are right now the same people, institutions and systems willing to inflict more harm as they chase the false climate change agenda.  It is an interesting and brutally honest perspective.

Oliver then walks through the looming and predictable consequences as he follows the process to its logical conclusion. WATCH:

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Every institution of the JoeBama administration is filled with climate change ideologues. Never is that more abundantly clear than a U.S. Treasury Secretary who celebrates the future of the U.S. economy becoming “dependent on the wind and the Sun“.  {Direct Rumble Link}

[Transcript] – “Our plan – powered by the Inflation Reduction Act – represents the largest investment in fighting climate change in our country’s history. It will put us well on our way toward a future where we depend on the wind, sun, and other clean sources for our energy. We will rid ourselves from our current dependence on fossil fuels.” (link)

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To understand the scale of the ideological effort, review this earlier statement in her prepared remarks, “In markets where we could not help lower prices by expanding supply, we have aimed to mitigate the pain directly, through cost relief.”  The admission here is that ideologically the Biden administration cannot expand energy supplies to lower energy prices without compromising their climate change mission.

[Full Transcript Here]

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Long-term CTH readers might remember in 2014 when President Obama claimed U.S. families had been paying too little for electricity for too long.  As soon as Joe Biden took office, he began implementing the Green New Deal energy policy that, (a) directly forces higher costs for energy; and (b) is now creating massive problems.

In July I noted my own electricity bill had jumped 28% in a single month.  That bill was followed by another almost identical increase this month.  A review of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July [Data Here] shows that nationally the same thing is happening.  The year-over-year electricity price has increased 15.2%. However, worse still, the July increase alone was 1.9%, which figures to an annualized rate of 22.8%.

When the growth rate of monthly increase is exceeding the year-over-year result, that means future higher prices are coming.  This is a serious problem that cannot be overstated. Already struggling with a doubling of gas prices, massive food price increases at the grocery store and the pain of all costs for goods far outpacing any rate of wage increase, this type of uncontrollable increase in price of electricity is going to hit the middle class hard.

Steve Cortes calls this the backside of the Biden created inflation hurricane.  The backside of a hurricane is the worst because it hits from the opposite direction upon already weakened infrastructure.

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