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4,000 people left Trump's North Carolina rally after ten minutes when their attendance payment arrived in their Venmo account.
A reporter asked many why they were leaving, they all said they were paid to attend the rally if they uploaded a photo after the 10 minute mark to their account at Trump's payment website.
It happens every Trump rally now.
— CoffeyTimeNews - 🇺🇸’s Emotional Support 🇨🇦 (@CoffeyTimeNews) September 25, 2024
Soon as the Venmo transaction hits their account, paid attendees get up and leave.
While he is drooling on himself at the podium.https://t.co/yJiyz8JKs4
Putin is receiving some benefit for the Russian GRU's purchase of DJT stock. I imagine the same will be true of Russia's purchase of Trump crypto coins.The sound of Americans cheering Vladimir Putin at a Trump rally should disgust every right-thinking person, but it’s a sign of how corrupt the Republican Party has become that they boo Zelensky and cheer Putin at Trump’s behest.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 25, 2024
Yet they move anyway
We grow wise with the years: this is the theory.
This year, the Year of Our Lord 2024, I suggest that you not vote for a person who is angry and saying lunatic things detached from reality and promising apocalyptic times to come. That is not for America.
God has blessed this country lavishly. Brilliant immigrants have come for freedom from the fevers of Europe and the grinding poverty of leftover colonial empires, and their ingenuity and spirit and wit and their adoration of this New World have enriched us each and every one.
We're simply a diverse and fascinating assemblage of wonders and oddities, dreamers and floaters, 4-Hers, bellyachers, Unitarians, contrarians, librarians, egalitarians, and Wagnerians — a person walks through town and never lacks for entertainment. God bless America. He has done so before. We need it now.
Deranged Donald Trump did warn Jay Powell and the Fed not to lower interest rate prior to the election.
Trump took to his "truth social club" today and ordered House Republicans to shut-down the US government.
If Putin doesn't see better results soon, Trump may take a dive out the window of a tall building.
Microsoft said Tuesday that Russian operatives have in recent weeks intensified their online attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign by producing and disseminating videos promoting “outlandish conspiracy theories” aimed at stoking US racial and political divisions.
One of the inauthentic videos, which Microsoft said had been viewed millions of times, claimed to show Harris supporters attacking an attendee of a Donald Trump rally. Another video falsely claimed that Harris paralyzed a young girl in a 2011 hit-and-run accident. Russian operatives promoted the latter story through a website pretending to be a local San Francisco media outlet, Microsoft researchers said.
Both videos were still accessible on X as of Tuesday afternoon, with one post of the video garnering 1.5 million views on its own. CNN has requested comment from the social media platform.
The report is the latest evidence that Kremlin-linked trolls and digital operatives are ramping up their efforts to denigrate Harris’s campaign just weeks before the presidential election. US intelligence agencies warned in July that Russia planned to “covertly use social media” to try to sway public opinion and undermine support for Ukraine in swing states.
Russia’s preferences for the presidential race haven’t shifted since 2020 or 2016, when Moscow conducted a range of influence operations aimed at denigrating Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, respectively, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
CNN has requested comment on the Microsoft report from the Harris-Walz campaign and from the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC.
Russians ‘struggled to pivot’ attack from Biden to Harris
There was an initial period after Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July when Russian influence operations“struggled to pivot” to find new ways to target the Democratic ticket, according to Microsoft. But then, in late August and early September, the videos attacking Harris and her supporters emerged.
“The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates,” Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, said in a blog post.
The research comes amid a flurry of US government action aimed at blunting Russian disinformation efforts targeting American voters in the final stretches of the presidential campaign.
The State Department last week declassified intelligence alleging that Russian state-run media outlet RT has become fully integrated into Russia’s intelligence operations around the world, including those targeting elections.
That followed an indictment unsealed by the Justice Department that accused two RT employees of funneling nearly $10 million into a US company, identified by CNN as Tenet Media, to create and amplify content that aligned with Russian interests.
US social media giant Meta on Monday announced a ban on RT over the Russian network’s “foreign interference activity.”
Without a "before and after" photo I'd never notice the change in the glacier which fell into the Dickson Fjord - no passing cruise chips in the fjord at the time.
https://www.seismosoc.org/news/greenland-megatsunami-led-to-week-long-oscillating-fjord-wave/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-09-13/mystery-seismic-signal-greenland-landslide-tsunami-seiche-fjord/104327900
Trump's "Truth Social" website teaches his followers that the false idea that the Earth is round was started in 1900 by the Rockefellers and the Rothchilds.
You'll learn how the Ice Wall surrounding our flat Earth protects our planet from warming and helps Commander Thor protect us from the aliens, on the other side of the ice wall, who are placated by being given human babies to eat. Eating pets is just the first truth-step into Trump's deep rabbit hole.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1482217882403439
She lets us know, "Everything you learn in schools is a big huge lie."
She's a Trump voter and I'm confident she hasn't any clue that Brexit was Putin's trial balloon to influence democracies, because she gets her "information" from Donald Trump's website which simply posts the stories Russia's GRU makes up for publication in the West.
I really don't think very many people get that Brexit was Russia's trial balloon.
People who don't understand economics, or those who needed a refresher, probably now understand that Brexit was a grave error, and they might even partially understand why.
Given these facts, anyone sensible has to ask why England can't face up to their mistake and isn't on the path to fixing something so vitally essential to their national well-being. Maybe they need time to process and understand their powerlessness? Can they do this and still be English?
But do people who understand Brexit was shockingly bad decision, also realize it was one of Putin's operations, pushed by English politicians who obtained benefits from Russia and hoped to obtain more? No I don't.
Why would people suddenly begin to believe their own lying eyes? It's much easier for most to continue being an unpaid Russian operative than admit they were used.
No, I don't think most can accept the reality that Nigel Farage, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump and the rest of the gang are eager paid Russian "influencers". Most UK politicians and financial businesses have greatly enjoyed Russian money - Russians or Saudis own most of the great homes.
Maybe even many voters still want to vote for Trump and Putin hoping some Russian wealth will benefit them personally . . . I bet they think the Americans they call "deep state" are standing between them and their Russian bonanza Tucker Carlson has promised them.
Yes, they actually think Russia, a very poor nation with an economy smaller than the economy of California or Texas, will magically be able to grant them their fantasy wishes. Russia that can't even provide their own people's basic needs or deal with the racial tensions within their borders. I don't think many people are even remotely rational.
When here Kruschev wanted his limo to turn off the route randomly so he could find the real Americans that lived like poor Russians - because he couldn't believe it.
UK goods exports to the EU sank 27% and import goods 32% in the years since the Brexit deal was signed. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd988p00z1no
The study by the Birmingham-based Aston University Business School found the variety of UK exports has declined with 1,645 fewer types of British products exported to every EU country.
"The negative impacts of the Brexit trade agreement have intensified over time, with more pronounced trade declines in the most recent period."
Farmers, clothing makers, and wood and paper manufacturers have been among the hardest hit industries, with many sub-sectors' EU export value falling by well-over half. The biggest drop in export value was for edible fruit and nuts, which nosedived 73.5%.
Trade with smaller and more distant countries in the EU has been affected the most, while trade with larger and closer countries has been affected the least.
In response a government spokesperson told the BBC it will "work to improve our trade and investment relationship with the EU and tear down unnecessary trade barriers, while recognising that there will be no return to the single market, customs union or freedom of movement." LOL
The UK has become a member of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership which the US has not joined. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_and_Progressive_Agreement_for_Trans-Pacific_Partnership
I was watching an older Peter Zeihan talk mentioning Xi Jinping wrote a treatise titled "The Role of the Military in Society" which the officers of China's People's Liberation Army now study in place of war-gaming.
Xi really is like Mao 2.0 - he has really divorced that place from reality, all in an attempt to keep control more easily. Something for Trump to aspire to in his dreams.
When our Secretary of State went to China to talk about their little "spy balloon" he wanted to know from the "Wolf Warrior" Foreign Minister how high up the in the government knowledge of this program had gone and he told Blinken that neither he nor anyone in his Ministry had not spoken to Xi in more than four months. Xi found out about the balloons when someone Xi knew mentioned they had seen it on the global news.
Xi and Putin have been flying in to see each other for their birthdays, maybe it was Putin who mentioned seeing the balloon on the news. I hear oil and gas news that Xi has been trying to low-ball Putin on gas price before they commit to spending resources to help Russia built the 2,600 km Power of Siberia pipeline from Russia to China. It would carry 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from the Yamal region in northern Russia to China via Mongolia, a little less than what Gazprom used to ship to Germany, but now at a cut-rate price.
The two Soviet states are back to leaning on each other in order to remain standing. What a hot mess.
Our country plays hardball.
Social Security contributions of 6.2% each for employer and employee, for a total of 12.4% of income in the US are less than half of the 20% plus 6% in China.
In China the state pension makes up the majority of a retiree's income.
China just announced a higher retirement age, phased in over the next 15 years.
For Men this age rises from age 60 to 63 and for Women depending on the type of job, from age 50 or 55 to 55 or 58.
The 2050 ratios of workers to retirees is easy for the US and Japan to deal (unless you listen to no-tax Republicans), but China is far less wealthy and these ratios will mean big sacrifices for some people who are not well-place communist leaders.
This retirement of the Baby Boom Generation is happening everywhere apart from Africa and India.
Voting for Donald Trump may be the last chance we have to save America's billionaires from the fast-spending hordes of Medicare-Takers. If you vote for Trump, you will likely never have to vote again.
The problem is that China's Party leadership really are sincere Marxists, as many have pointed out.
The difference between fascists and Marxists is practically non-existent.
China and Xi have made exhaustive studies of why the Russian communist system collapsed, which they definitively put it down to the Party giving up absolute control leading to a loss of authority and systemic collapse. The CCP is determined this won't ever happen in China and has become a police state.
Of course Russia's primary problem was their centrally-directed communist economy, but China is convinced they can eventually do communism far better than Russia, so their primary mission with Xi has been neutralizing all competing powers.
China has a massive propaganda operation to convince the world of their rise and greatness, but the reality behind their nationalistic posters and videos is pretty catastrophic.
All successful business people have been arrested, interrogated and told their place in the system. All large businesses now have Party minders on their boards who can over-rule all company decisions contrary to the Party's wishes.
Thousands of companies have been presented with bills from the government which must be paid, without any explanation of what they're for. Bao Fan, CEO of the investment bank China Renaissance is probably the most recent. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/12/tech/china-bao-fan-missing-mystery-bill-hnk-intl/index.html
Deng Xiaoping, with a wink, created a temporary free market framework he called "communism with Chinese characteristics". And we could say the corruption which required all businesses to pay a bribe or a share of the business to Party officials was one of its most unique characteristics.
But this resulted in a backlash with Maoists like Bo Xi Lai fighting with other authoritarians like XI, with Xi ending up the winning authoritarian to make the Party the official "Master of China's Much-less-Free Market". This is very unlikely to change during our lifetimes, maybe not for generations.
China is rapidly becoming a massive North Korea.
One aspect of China's real estate bubble that many don't know is that "home owners" in China don't own the land under their homes - it's merely leased from the government for no longer than 70 years, with a 40 year maximum lease on land used for commercial uses.
Ed Yardeni says . . .
Verizon said that it expects to record severance charges in a range between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion in payments as 4,800 of their 105,400 full-time employees take severance offers by March 2025.
Verizon also said that as part of ongoing cost-savings initiatives, it plans to stop using certain offices and leave “non-strategic portions” of certain businesses, without giving more details.
Earlier this month Verizon announced plans to buy Frontier Communications in a $20 billion all-cash deal to obtain their extensive fiber-internet provider in the U.S. which is primarily important for back-haul in wireless communications.
Every member of OPEC always cheats on their quotas and produces more than their allocation.
I wouldn't be looking for price strength there.
"Forget about a recession in the US. Currently, it is China's recession/depression that is weighing on oil prices, global bond yields, and the dollar." - Ed Yardani
Chevron and Exxon both have spent almost a decade focused on reducing the production cost of oil and gas.
Foregoing all higher cost production areas they've doubled down on scale of size in the Permian with a $16 production cost, Kazakhstan with a $3.50 production cost per barrel and are not partners in offshore Guyana whose costs will come in somewhere between these two price regions. This last partnership after Chevron bought Hess at a knock-down price, much to Exxon's chagrin.
No one is a fortune teller, but both oil majors have planned for a lower priced commodity market. And in a commodity market, it's the low cost producers that survive and succeed.
I got the gist of it from a 19 minute special presentation by Jon Stewart on YouTube
Trump is totally disconnected from reality and yet there's still a lot of crazy people wanting to vote for him.
Like Nick said, his family while in Hungary sometimes they listened to the Nazis and sometimes they listened to the Communists, and even on rare occasions listened to their centrist Hungarian government . . . . and then they lost their country to one of the extremes and had to flee to America. Many don't value stability or safety - they long for excitement and chaos and all too often they get it.
This is very, very sad.
I see Trump made a big point tonight of saying how much Hungary's PM Viktor Orban likes him, so he claims that absolutely means he's not weird.
I've not watched any of it. I prefer to read about events after the fact.
You're my first report
Qin Gang, China's hyper-aggressive “wolf warrior” Foreign Minister, went missing from Xi's inner circle in Summer 2003. He's been located working at his new low-level job at a Foreign Ministry publishing house.
A strident Xi loyalist, Qin was promoted to foreign minister at record speed. At 56, he was not only tapped as foreign minister but also elevated to state councilor, a senior position that Wang Yi, Qin’s predecessor, did not achieve until his 60s, after five years as foreign minister.
This sudden end to Qi's career is a relatively happy outcome, considering most had assumed Qin was either in prison or had suffered a fatal run-in with a Face Brick.
China's security ministry has found fewer than three or four smacks with a face brick is normally enough to bring your head into full alignment with Party policy.
Many suggest this indicates Emperor Xi's oppressive dictatorship has become significantly less absolute.
China's security ministry has found that fewer than three or four smacks with a face brick is normally enough to bring your head into full alignment with current Party policy.
I've continued to own one share of CVX, now declined to the point that the dividend yields 4.71% — above 5% at $130 it would be very interesting.
But for now the vortex of deflation continues to spin out of China.
OPEC is big-talking, but they always cheat and sell more.
The nuttiest part of the China story is how they're gurgling in excess capacity to produce solar panels and coal-powered-battery-cars.
Guess what part of the world is least productive for solar panels, due to cloud cover and humidity . . . China. China says they'll eventually have nuclear plants to power those electric cars, just as we'll eventually deal with human caused climate change. Good thing China has a viscous dictatorship in place, because boy are they going to need it.
I saw a YouTube video of a Chinese speaking CNBC journalist trying out new electric cars in China. She pointed out how the steering wheel of one model was positioned about two to three inches to the right of the center of the driver's seat - the car actually designed that way to avoid spending money on an offset in the steering gearbox assembly.
Huge design defects in many of the car models - but the most cars come standard with electronic features like auto-park that they charge $3,500 for in the US, and are huge profit options as they actually cost the automaker only a few hundred Dollars. Chinese factories and home builders have incinerated Trillions of Dollars producing crap of no value - and are locked out of Europe, Canada, and the US due to anti-dumping tariffs.
That's the problem with almost all stocks. Meta has strong support at $450, but the bad news is it's currently at $500.
I'd love to see the market head back up and pop back up to the highs of mid-July.
But I have a hunch Glen and I are going to be owing the government a pile of capital gains when we file our taxes come next February, and we'll have to have made the estimated payments before the end of the year.
The Fed lowering rates is good for many types of assets, except for the likely reasons the Fed will have to lower rates.
We're lucky taming inflation has been so easy with the Vortex of Deflation swirling in China, sending commodity prices lower - oil, gas, copper, metals, wheat, pork - all lower.
I think the luckiest people in the world are those whose prosperity doesn't depend on China. That's going to be and uglier and uglier place in coming years.
Tenet Media found Tucker Mitchell not subtle enough to broadcast on their pro-Trump Russian influence network.
LOL. According to the DOJ indictment, one of Tenet Media's producers didn’t want to post Tucker Carlson's grocery store trip in Russia because they thought it was not subtle enough for a Russian influence operation: “It just feels like overt shilling" pic.twitter.com/SKBDr8zdUP
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 5, 2024
We're running the risk of seeing lower interest rates.
The Justice Dept has revealed pro-Trump Tenet Media is a “covert propaganda project” controlled by the Russian government to “shape the public opinion in ‘Western audiences’”. https://www.tenetmedia.com/
The Tennessee firm created in 2023 has been paid $10 million by Russia Today to help re-elect Donald Trump and bolster Trump's effort to end support for Ukraine.
The Russian-paid self-described "Fearless Voices" include right-wing political commentators Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson, Laura Southern, Taylor Hansen, and Matt Christiansen. The top propagandist being paid a $400,000 monthly fee, a $100,000 signing bonus and an additional performance bonus.
Most of Tenet's videos focus on domestic politics, with recent titles including “Armed Migrant Gang Takes Over Colorado Apartment Building,” “The Great Replacement: Can We Finally Talk About It,” and “‘They Were Lied To:’ the TRUTH about Gender Ideology.”
RT was sanctioned and forced to cease operations in the U.S. and Canada following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to the indictment, Tenet and other projects like it were created as a response to the sanctions in order to foster a “covert network” to spread Russian messaging. In 2023, G. Kline Preston IV, a local attorney, and Steve Gill, a conservative pundit, both showed up on a list of 34 “foreign observers” who participated as observers in Russian elections in occupied Ukrainian territories.
Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Tenet Media’s has featured high-profile conservative guests, including Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, and Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.
Someone has had your thought previously. In the upside-down world of Trey Parker's "South Park", Donald Trump had run for PM of Canada, and many voted for him as a joke which turned out to be not quite so funny.
As one Canadian voter lamented: "He didn't really offer any solutions, he just said outrageous things. We thought it was funny. Nobody really thought he'd ever be PM. It was a joke! But we just let the joke go on for too long."
America quickly fills up with Canadian refugees fleeing the chaos of Trump's Canada.
In South Park episode "Where my Country Gone?" South Parks's math teacher Mr Garrison leads a crowd of angry Americans to the Canadian border where Canadian Prime Minister Donald Trump sits atop Canada's new Border Wall, built "so you filthy Americans can't rape our women and such and to preserve all our cool shit.."
This makes Mr Garrison so angry he illegally enters Canada inside a barrel going over Niagara Falls where he marches to Trump Tower in Toronto to murder Donald Trump for insulting America. As he enters the office, Donald Trump is dancing to the popular 1982 song "The Safety Dance".
Having proven his complete vulgarity and lack of ethics, Mr Garrison, wearing orange racoon make-up, with his sleazy but hot VP candidate Caitlyn Jenner are promptly elected to the White House - with the help of a new hallucinogenic food product called 'member berries which made the eater remember how good things used to be before there were immigrants in America. - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/nov/10/south-park-spoofs-us-election-trump
A Bremen ad agency has creates an AI generated pop-star singer, Ben Gaya (k)ein echter popstar, whose lyrics and music are so far largely forgettable.
The voice and image, generated by written prompts, sounds like a singer using auto-tune. The most difficult aspect is apparently making the voice sound like the same person from one song to the next.
Make sure the CC close caption option is on for English sub-titles.
A turf war has fueled a 50% rise in Toronto shootings, mostly with guns smuggled from the U.S.
Rival gangs control parts of the tow-truck industry here, using the heavy-duty vehicles to transport drugs, extort car-crash victims with high fees, and fake automobile accidents to defraud insurance. They once resolved their territorial differences with their fists, but now a wave of gun smuggling from the U.S. has turned their fights into a lethal blood sport. https://www.wsj.com/articles/gun-trafficking-state-laws-11659539201
This year through late August, Toronto shootings are up 50% compared with the same period last year and homicides are up 20%—a surge caused in part by “the tow-truck violence,” said Inspector Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service’s guns-and-gangs unit. In all, about one in seven of Toronto’s shootings and dischargings of firearms this year have been related to the towing industry, police said.
“It’s pretty brazen,” Krawczyk said.
Toronto remains among the safest cities in the world, according to The Economist, which publishes an annual index on the topic. The city’s 306 shooting incidents from January to late August were far below the 1,553 recorded in Chicago or the 594 in New York City.
But the “tow-truck turf wars,” as the Canadian press has dubbed the Toronto shootings, have put the city on edge.
Drive-by shootings have targeted drivers and company offices. Masked arsonists have doused trucks in gasoline and torched them. In July, police said, two teenagers with a stolen Glock handgun killed a man after going on a two-day, citywide shooting spree that targeted towing-company offices and tow trucks.
In March, a towing-company owner was shot dead in a gangland-style killing in Toronto’s north end. His killing, which remains unsolved, triggered a spasm of violence. Things have gotten so bad that Toronto’s police department has created a tow-truck task force.
Authorities blame guns smuggled from the U.S. for the surge in violence. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has boosted the city’s policing budget and invested in programs to prevent youths from joining gangs, but she said the police are scrambling to keep up.
“No doubt about it, we are seeing way too many guns from the States coming across the border,” Chow said in an interview.
The disputes between tow-truck gangs are familiar, police said, as they fight over control of geographic territory. What has changed is how they settle scores.
Organized gangs rely on a readily available supply of guns smuggled north from such places as Ohio, Michigan, Texas and Florida, where it is much easier to buy a gun than in Canada.
Many Canadians own hunting guns, but can’t legally buy handguns, and semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 are banned. Background checks for firearms licenses are mandatory. Smuggled U.S. firearms are used in as many as 90% of all gun crimes in Toronto, according to the city’s police.
Canada’s border-patrol agency said its gun seizures at the U.S. border increased 25% between the 2019 and 2024 fiscal years. The agency said it can’t track how many guns are successfully smuggled into Canada, but the number is likely in the thousands, said Chris Taylor, the attaché to Canada for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which tracks gun trafficking for the Justice Department.
Almost 25,000 guns seized in Canada were traceable to U.S. sources between 2017 and 2021, according to ATF, part of a global trend of U.S.-made guns being smuggled to arm criminal gangs and insurgent groups. ATF traced almost 98,000 guns seized in Mexico to U.S. sources during those five years, and more than 26,000 in Central America.
Alexander Vinogradsky—the Toronto tow-company owner who was killed in March—allegedly a kingpin in Toronto’s tow-truck underworld who ordered hits on Soheil "Cadi" Rafipour, was shot dead that Christmas Eve in 2018 and another rival, both of who worked for Toronto resident Girolamo Commisso — the nephew of Cosimo Commisso, a man long alleged to be a senior Mafia figure in the Greater Toronto Area.
Girolamo Commisso aka "Shithead" - mafia rival
Toronto Tow Czars - Vinogradsky brothers aka "The Potato Heads"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/richmond-hill-fatal-1.4958913
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cosimo-commisso-link-to-toronto-construction-firm-prompts-union-to-ask-for-police-probe-1.2619847
“When I started, it was all fistfights,” Vinogradksy said in 2019, according to court documents, after he escaped an attempt on his life. “Now it’s people hiring people to do this.”
According to a court document, he called police in a panic one day to report that he was in a car chase and someone was shooting at him. He told police the attempt on his life was “towing related.”
In 2020, he was charged with working for a criminal organization and conspiracy to commit arson. The charges were later dropped. Police investigated Vinogradsky when one of his rivals was killed in a Christmas Eve killing in 2018, according to court documents.
Rachel Lichtman, a lawyer who represented Vinogradsky when he was arrested in 2020, declined to comment on the specifics of her client’s case.
In March, police were called after shots were fired in north Toronto. They found Vinogradsky lying dead outside his bullet-riddled SUV.
Industry experts say the towing business is particularly vulnerable to corruption because it offers gangs an easy way to make money and transport contraband. Cities in Australia and South Africa have had similar problems with their towing industries, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva-based think tank.
What steps should Canadian officials take to address the turf war over tow-trucking services? Join the conversation below.
In Toronto, the crime groups often overcharge accident victims for towing and storage fees. Sometimes they fake accidents and, working with body shops and physiotherapists, create fake auto-repair and healthcare bills that bring in thousands of dollars from insurance companies. In raids on towing gangs, police have seized cash and drugs along with guns.
The province of Ontario, where Toronto is located, has introduced regulations that will force towing companies to be certified and for drivers to pass background checks.
“While the vast majority of Ontario’s towing industry operates in good faith, bad actors have preyed on vulnerable drivers for too long,” said Prabmeet Sarkaria, minister of transportation, in a June announcement.
For people working in Toronto’s towing industry, the violence has become a major source of concern.
“We don’t understand why,” said Sue Eddy, a dispatcher for SSR Towing, in Toronto’s east end. “Maybe they’re trying to intimidate us to get us out of the business.”
One shooting victim was Peter Simov, a 19-year-old student working for Vinogradsky in 2019.
On the day he died, Simov texted his girlfriend and told her that five of Vinogradsky’s trucks had been burned and that there had been a shootout.
He sent her a photo of a revolver his boss had apparently given him for protection, according to texts viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Simov was found dead later that night in what police initially described as suicide but was later determined to be an accidental, self-inflicted shooting. Simov’s sister, Nadezhda Simova, is pushing to get the investigative case records because she suspects her brother was actually murdered.
The gun in the picture Simov sent his girlfriend was eventually traced to a man charged in Canada with smuggling guns from Florida.
With more earnings than can be invested in new business Nvidia boosted its stock buyback authorization by $50 billion.
That’s double the size of the $25 billion share-repurchase program announced a year ago, which still had $7.5 billion remaining on it as of the end of the latest quarter.
The Fed could always take interest rates to 7.5%, up from the current 5.5% instead of cutting rates.
That might have an interesting impact on unemployment.
It's worth a try if it can bring inflation down to 2.0% from the current excessively high 2.6%.
Apple and Nvidia are reportedly in talks to invest in ChatGPT creator OpenAI by taking part in a multi-billion dollar funding round led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-and-nvidia-in-talks-to-invest-in-openai-report-71801994
The fundraising round will see Apple and Nvidia invest in OpenAI alongside long-time investor Microsoft, in a fundraising round expected to value the artificial intelligence research organization at over $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Participation in the funding round, which is expected to raise several billion dollars, would mark the first investments from either company into OpenAI as both companies have forged closer links with the AI firm in recent months. It remains unclear what sums Apple and Nvidia are planning to invest.
Microsoft is currently OpenAI’s largest and most influential investor, having put a combined sum worth $13 billion into the AI research organization since 2019, via agreements that have given it a 49% stake in the entity.
In June, Apple announced it had struck an agreement with OpenAI to use ChatGPT in its own AI programs. Nvidia has worked closely with OpenAI in the past on various research initiatives that have seen the AI firm use the chip maker’s most advanced semiconductors.
Apple has historically stayed away from investing in startups. Nvidia has more recently increased its investment activity over the past two years, including by investing in a series of AI companies.
The forward P/E for Nvidia is 43.2 with only 500% earnings growth.
Barrons, the wrong-way advisor for those who prefer a contrarian veneer, is instead recommending the value play, Chipolte Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG) because it has a forward P/E of only 51.4 with an outstanding annual revenue growth of 16.2% and profit growth of 12.2%. Nvidia is a financial dud only billionaires should invest in, because they can easily afford to take a major loss on a speculative chip designer.
Chipolte Has Fallen Enough. It’s Time to Buy This ‘Chip’ Stock. - Barron's https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/buy-chipotle-stock-price-pick-59d5e904
There's also a lot of recommendations for Blackstone's BREIT, the roach motel of real estate investing - you can buy shares of BREIT, but you can't turn around and sell your BREIT shares - you have to get in line to sell like everyone else. The price is what Blackstone says it is, you just can't sell at that price you paid to get in.
The “Low-Wage 100” — spent a staggering $522 billion on buybacks from 2019 to 2023, according to the study from the Institute for Policy Studies, published Thursday. The “Low-Wage 100” are the S&P 500 companies with the lowest-paid workers — including fast-food chains, home-improvement retailers and consumers-goods makers. Lowe’s Cos. (NYSE:LOW) led the pack on share buybacks.
Sarah Anderson, director of the IPS Global Economy Project and co-editor of the IPS website https://inequality.org/ described buybacks in low-wage businesses as a “financial maneuver that artificially inflates CEO stock-based pay and siphons corporate dollars out of worker wages and long-term investments.” 47 of the Low-Wage 100 put more money into buying back their own shares than investing in capital improvements. The 20 largest employers in the group have spent nine times as much on buybacks as on retirement-plan contributions for employees.
William Blair Co analyst Sharon Zackfia said, the price-difference between the high end restaurants and the low end has narrowed. “Fast food has been pretty aggressive with their price increases over the past two to three years, without giving more to the consumer,” she told MarketWatch, "which is a big bonus for investors so long as fast-food venues can keep packing in the punters."
Just another reason Barrons and Marketwatch, part of the merciless propaganda group Fox News, is touting low-wage favorite Chipolte Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG).
The CrowdStrike Falcon platform now provides safeguards for NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprints, which are reference applications that use Nvidia’s NIM microservices and its NeMo platform, as part of Nvidia’s enterprise software stack.
In cooperation with Nvidia this allows developers to securely use open-source foundational models and accelerate innovation in generative AI.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/crowdstrike-adds-new-safeguards-for-nvidia-s-ai-resources-4f537482
NVDA and CRWD report their earnings after the market's close tomorrow
Canadian, European and American tariffs on China's electric auto exports are designed to ensure that virtually no buyers pay the prohibitively expensive import duties on Chinese electric vehicles.
We need to help China transition to a more balanced economy based primarily on domestic consumption, like the rest of the world and it's going to get very costly for them because they're making the wrong decisions.
China has reached the point where their labor costs are no longer low enough to attract out-sourcing with 30% unemployment among citizens under age 30. Having prohibited their citizens from exporting their capital China has now placed 42% of their retirement funds into rapidly depreciating empty homes, most in empty cities, nearly 3 homes for each family in China with a declining population size - it's a catastrophe. 40% of the stations on China's main high-speed rail line were closed in 2017 and remain closed.
It's a typical result of incompetent centrally planned communist economics.
Rather than invest in local consumption, China has doubled-down on investing in offensive military capability and actions, attracting Tesla, then copying Tesla's techniques and subsidizing their electric car industry, which provides no environmental benefits because all of their electric cars are all coal-powered. China has also taken similar offensive actions in the tech industry, so we've cut them off from buying new chip making equipment.
Having declared war on the developed world rather than becoming a partner, China will be paying a very heavy price.
They'll end up a stagnant empty shell of an economy similar to what Japan became but with a tiny fraction of Japan's per capita wealth.
The result of making bad choices is always very sad.