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By Tyler Durden

The US Coast Guard said on Thursday morning it was responding to a fire on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

A Coast Guard news release says the fire was reported around 2:30 a.m. Thursday on an oil platform about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana. It was not immediately clear whose platform it was.

The Coast Guard says four people aboard the platform evacuated and were rescued by a supply vessel. No injuries have been reported.

Four vessels are fighting the fire and the cause is under investigation. The USCG said a Clean Gulf oil spill response organization is enroute to platform

Developing story.

…read more

Source: US Coast Guard Responding To Fire On Oil Platform Off Louisiana Coast

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Check out this receipt and you realize why the country just elected Donald Trump. Liberal Democrat scumbag mayor Jim Kenney and his entirely Democrat city council thought it was a brilliant idea to ram a beverage tax down the throats of Philadelphians last year. They were doing it for the chilruns. It’s always for the chilrun. The ignorant masses bought the load of bullshit because they don’t understand maff. They understand it now. The tax went into effect on January 1 and the sticker shock is infuriating the ignorant masses.

This receipt for a 10 pack of flavored water shows a 51% beverage tax. It gets even better. PA has a sales tax of 6%. Philly already charges another 2% (for the chilruns) to make the sales tax 8%. These bastards now charge the 8% on the original price plus the beverage tax. Last week this purchase came to $6.47. Today it is $9.75.

Now ask yourself, who drinks the most sugary drinks? That’s right. Obese uneducated poor people who are likely to be scraping by on food stamps or very low incomes. Kenney and his liberal minions have fucked over their main voters. This tax is going to drive grocery purchases outside the city and hurt small restaurant owners. It isn’t benefiting kids. It’s funding the bloated pensions of teachers and government employees. Overall tax revenue will decline. Democrats are complete idiots when it comes to economics. Taxing their people to death is destroying Philly.

As a side note, PA, which already had the highest gas tax in the country, increased it by another 8 cents per gallon on January 1. I’m sure the corrupt PA Dept of Transportation will spend the millions wisely on bloated union construction contracts for sub-par work that is only two years late getting completed. Happy New Year from Taxylvania!!!!

Philadelphia rang in the new year with a controversial new beverage tax on soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks. The tax, which went into effect on Sunday, is the first one of its kind in a major city in the United States.

While the tax is technically 1.5 cents per ounce, which doesn’t sound too terrible, when buying a 10-pack of 20 oz bottles those numbers climb pretty quickly. In this case, a 10-pack of Propel flavored water that originally retailed for $5.99 had an additional three dollars tacked on to it in taxes.

Chuck Andrews picked up a $1.77 gallon jug of tea, got home and looked at his receipt.

“When I read the receipt I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. I paid more in tax than I did for the product,'” Andrews said.

The tax on the $1.77 gallon of tea was $1.92 cents.

“Which is OK if you had told me,” he said.

Andrews’ point is he would rather have the full cost, the product and the tax inclusive, posted on the main shelf tag.

A customer at a Save-A-Lot on Woodhaven Road snapped a picture of a 12-pack of diet …read more

Source: Masses Shocked By Philly Beverage Tax Impact

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

As the financial crisis jolted the nation in September, Senator Charles E. Schumer was consumed. He traded telephone calls with bankers, then became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout. He spent hours in closed-door briefings and a weekend helping Congressional leaders nail down details of the $700 billion rescue package.

The next day, Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.

“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”

The message clearly resonated. The next week, executives at firms represented at the breakfast sent in more than $135,000 in campaign donations.

He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies, for example, sponsored legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, pushed to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and called for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent.

At times in Congress, Mr. Schumer has teamed up with Republicans, like former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who aggressively promoted a free-market agenda. Mr. Schumer pushed for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, passed in November 1999, which knocked down the walls between investment banks and commercial banks and allowed financial supermarkets to flourish.The law also weakened regulatory oversight by fracturing it among different agencies.

– From The New York Times article: A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits

Great way to start off the new year for the Democrats. New Senate Minority leader, and Wall Street mega-defender, Chuck Schumer just went on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show and warned Donald Trump that U.S. intelligence agencies could retaliate against him for disagreeing with their claims (based on no public evidence thus far) that Russia hacked the DNC/John Podesta and released it to Wikileaks with the intent of helping Trump win the election.

Here’s what he said courtesy of The Washington Examiner:

The new leader of Democrats in the Senate says Donald Trump is being “really dumb” for picking a fight with intelligence officials, suggesting they have ways to strike back, after the president-elect speculated Tuesday that his “so-called” briefing about Russian cyberattacks had been delayed in order to build a case.

“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday evening on MSNBC after host Rachel Maddow informed him that intelligence sources told NBC news that the briefing had not been delayed.

Now watch the clip for yourself. I’m certain …read more

Source: Did Chuck Schumer Just Threaten Donald Trump?

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mark Spitznagel via The Mises Institute,

There’s a lot of talk these days about the so-called “neutral” (or “natural” or “terminal”) interest rate projections of the Federal Reserve. In fact, their projection of this number is a key argument in their ongoing decision to keep rates at historically very-low levels for what has been an extended period of time. (Specifically, Federal Reserve officials have argued that the neutral interest rate has sharply declined in recent years, meaning that apparently ultra-low interest rates do not really signify easy monetary policy.)

What is this neutral rate? The neutral rate, it is argued, is simply the federal funds rate at which the economy is in equilibrium or balance. If the federal funds rate were at this mysterious neutral rate level, monetary policy would be neither loose nor tight, and the economy neither too hot nor too cold, but rather just chugging along at its long-run optimal potential. The underlying theory is that loose monetary policy — where the Fed’s policy rate is set below the neutral rate — can temporarily stimulate the economy, but only by causing price inflation that exceeds the Fed’s desired target (which, by the way, eventually causes overheating and a crash). On the other hand, if the Fed is too tight and sets the policy rate above the neutral rate, then unemployment creeps higher than desired and price inflation comes in below target.

In short, the neutral interest rate is one where the central bank is not itself distorting the economy. Monetary policy would really be nonexistent, as the Fed would not be altering the interest rate resulting from a free market discovery process between borrowers and savers. (This of course raises the question, why do central planners need to fabricate something that would naturally exist in their absence?) This is near where Yellen actually thinks we are these days, hence she sees little urgency in raising rates and thus lessening what, on the face of it, looks like a very loose current monetary policy.

The Theory of the Neutral or Natural Rate

Much of this neutral rate talk at the Fed is supposedly supported by the work of Swedish economist Knut Wicksell (1851–1926), who argued that the “natural” interest rate would express the exchange rate of present for future goods in a barter economy. If in practice the banks actually charged an interest rate below this natural rate, Wicksell argued that commodity prices would rise, whereas if the banks in practice charged an interest rate above the natural one, then commodity prices would fall. But that’s where Wicksell — often associated with the free-market Austrian school of economics — would cease to recognize his own ideas in current central bank thinking. Wicksell’s natural rate was a freely discovered market price in an economy, which reflected the implicit (real) rate of return on capital investments. For Wicksell, the natural interest rate was not a policy lever to be manipulated, in order to hit some employment or output goal. …read more

Source: What Is This "Neutral" Interest Rate Touted By The Fed?

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They’re quiet, discreet and easy to clean. …read more

Source: Smart breast pump lets moms multitask

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

It’s amazing what can happen in a week.

Before this publication went on hiatus last week, one of the last letters I wrote to you in 2016 was about the National Defense Authorization Act and its treasure trove of freedom-killing provisions.

Section 1287, for example, creates a new agency called the “Global Engagement Center”, aka Ministry of Truth.

It has one purpose: to combat fake news.

The Global Engagement Center will fund and train journalists around the world to push a never-ending flow of US propaganda and cripple any independent outlet that doesn’t conform to the official government narrative.

Sadly, this is not unusual.

Each year, Congress creates a new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is essentially the military budget for the following year.

But without fail, each year’s NDAA is crammed full of horrific provisions which either waste taxpayer funds on corrupt pet projects, or destroy Americans’ civil liberties.

You may remember the 2012 NDAA, for example, which President Obama signed into law on New Years Eve 2011.

That year’s NDAA contained a section authorizing the military detention of US citizens on US soil.

Now we’re getting the Ministry of Truth.

President Obama signed this year’s NDAA into law on Christmas Day, which means that the Global Engagement Center will be live and operational within six months.

Four days later on December 29th, he issued an executive order intended to punish the Russian government for manipulating the US election.

The order contains some incredibly vague language targeting anyone engaged in “cyber-related activities” that are “reasonably likely” to pose some threat, including “activities to undermine democratic processes or institutions”.

The order also threatens anyone who provides “goods or services” to those engaged in the aforementioned cyber-related activities.

Anyone deemed by the US government to fit those incredibly broad definitions can have their assets frozen instantly.

Now, the spirit of the order is to go after all the Russians and Chinese they think are complicit in hacking the US government and US corporations.

(Mr. Obama also expelled a multitude of Russian diplomats that the FBI suspects of being spies, raising the question of why these people were in the US to begin with.)

Yet such broad and vague language can easily be applied to ensnare just about anyone they want.

If you just happen to have sold a used mobile phone over Craigslist to someone who ends up being a hacker, you can be targeted under this order.

Same with anyone who uses the Internet (engages in “cyber-related activities”) to express strong anti-government opinions (“undermine democratic . . . institutions”).

Now, clearly that’s not the intention with this order.

But when enough time passes, rules and regulations have a strong tendency to be used in ways that dramatically diverge from their original intent.

Case in point: the US government has wrongfully seized billions of dollars worth of cash and property over the years through what’s known as Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Civil Asset Forfeiture is essentially a form of theft.

But it’s perfectly legal for local, state, and federal police agencies to steal from you because of technicalities that …read more

Source: The Coming Crackdown On Free Speech

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By Tyler Durden

Beijing’s pollution problem is getting worse by the day.

On Wednesday, the Chinese capital issued its highest “red fog alert” for only the second day in history, keeping highways closed in and around the city which is already under a smog alert after weeks of choking winter pollution. China’s weather bureau warned of visibility of less than 50 meters in some areas, leading many airports to cancel flights.

The heavily polluted Hebei province, which surrounds most of Beijing, said on Tuesday it had ordered all polluting firms in Tangshan, China’s biggest steel-producing city to the east of Beijing, to shut down which likely means that China is in for a substantial “manufacturing” shock in the coming months.

Hebei, which was home to seven of China’s 10 smoggiest cities in 2015, will build the world’s biggest dust prevention barrier, stretching nearly two miles, at the major coal port of Qinhuangdao in a bid to cut pollution, state media said on Wednesday.

For now, however, China is very much defenseless against the toxic byproduct of its rapid industrialization, which also happens to be a major factor permitting the Chinese economy to grow at the goalseeked 6-7% level or somewhere thereabouts. Unfortunately for Beijing, it’s a choice of either stable manufacturing growth or clean air: the two are mutually exclusive.

And nowhere was that more visible today, so to speak, than near the port of Tianjin, where according to the Beijing Evening News, a large cruise ship with more than 2,000 people on board was stuck at sea for two days because it was unable to dock in the heavy smog that has enveloped much of northern China. The vessel finally returned to the Port of Tianjin on Monday afternoon after drifting for two days at sea. The thick air pollution had earlier made it impossible to safely berth the vessel, according to the article

A passenger was quoted as saying that the ship was scheduled to return on New Year’s Eve after traveling to South Korea and Japan. But she was told by the crew that the ship could not dock as visibility was severely compromised by the smog. She said the passengers had been unsure how long they would be stuck at sea but were grateful there was plenty of entertainment on board to kill time.

“Unlike passengers who are stuck at some public facilities like an airport, we got to use the pool and the gym to keep ourselves busy,” she said.

As Reuters adds, poor visibility prompted three major northern ports to suspend the loading of ships on Tuesday, maritime safety agencies said.

Unless Beijing’s leadership is willing to take draconian measures to curb smog production, which inevitably means an economic slowdown, expect scenes such as the ones shown below to continue.

It’s started snowing in Beijing. What do you call smoggy snow? Smow? Snog? pic.twitter.com/BKWGYufidu

— Chris Buckley ??? (@ChuBailiang) January 5, 2017

Beijing out my window – the air has taste and texture today. pic.twitter.com/QoZWH20f4E

— Chris …read more

Source: Chinese Cruise Ship With 2,000 Passengers Stuck At Sea For Two Days Due To Smog

    

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By Tyler Durden

Authored by Glenn Greenwald, originally posted at The Intercept,

In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom.

The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid” as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editor’s note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that “the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility” and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop.

But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That’s because journalists — including those at the Post — aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper’s executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become).

After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions.

Baron himself, editorial leader of the Post, is a perfect case study in this irresponsible tactic. It was Baron who went to Twitter on the evening of November 24 to announce the Post’s exposé of the enormous reach of Russia’s fake news operation, based on what he heralded as the findings of “independent researchers.” Baron’s tweet went all over the place; to date, it has been re-tweeted more than 3,000 times, including by many journalists with their own large followings:

Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, say independent researchers https://t.co/3ETVXWw16Q

— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) November 25, 2016

But after that story faced a barrage of intense criticism — from Adrian Chen in the New Yorker (“propaganda about Russia propaganda”), Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone (“shameful, disgusting”), my own article, and many others — including legal threats from the sites smeared as Russian propaganda outlets by the Post’s “independent researchers” — the Post finally added its lengthy editor’s note distancing itself …read more

Source: Washington Post Is Richly Rewarded For False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived

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Some Ford owners will no longer need a key to unlock and start their car, with help from Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa. …read more

Source: You’ll soon be able to start a Ford via Amazon Echo

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